Powers: More than you ever wanted to know about what Maggie can do
For the curious, for plotting, what-have-you, more than you ever wanted to know about Maggie's abilities:
Paper Mastery
Of course, it should go without saying that this is OOC knowledge and I would appreciate no metagaming with this--but I hope that this is useful in explaining what she's capable of.
Maggie is a Paper Master. In a Paper Master's hands, paper can be shaped and re-shaped telekinetically, and its durability increased a hundred fold. Take something as thin as paper that is nearly unfoldable and unbreakable, and you get something that can slice through steel. Likewise, it can "catch" bullets and block attacks. Paper masters can bind, shape, and animate paper into a variety of useful forms and tools: ropes, staircases, self-propelling paper airplanes, and beyond.
In the various pieces of R.O.D media, there's a suggestion that while paper mastery is in part an inherited trait (a metahuman power or mutation in comics terms), there's also a psychological-psychic connection---that paper masters love books and reading so much, that the books (and by extension, any paper--which has the potential to hold a human being's creative energy) love them back. Maggie isn't just willing paper to catch bullets for her--in theory, the paper is also leaping out of her hand to protect her, ready to sacrifice itself for her. She has to be aware that someone's trying to shoot her, though. It's not a subconscious reaction, more of a symbiosis. The manga and anime also touch upon Paper Masters having a sort of "book empathy": Paper Masters "feel" what books "feel" ("This book wants you to read it" or expressing pain when seeing books burn), but that could also entirely be interpreted as their special little brand of bibliomaniacal insanity.
Paper masters' abilities reflect their individual wills and personalities. Maggie is by nature a protector, a guardian--so her defensive abilities are extremely strong. If she has enough paper to hand and you don't have a way to disable her paper mastery, it's going to be nearly impossible to land a shot on her--or anyone she's protecting. More spectacularly, she uses paper to create more guardians, bigger and stronger and faster than she can be on her own--animal shaped "familiars" that fight for her, shield her comrades with their bodies, and provide transport and other assistance. To an extent she can "see" through the eyes of her familiars (mostly the paper bird with which she uses to fly)--but she still needs to be close to them, and can't send them out long range. Even when they appear separate from her, she is actually connected to them through barely visible paper "strings," and she controls them like psychic marionettes.
Her most common familiars:
Wolf: Used most often for fighting, it bull rushes, bites, and strikes enemies with its forelimbs. When she was with her sisters, her younger sister sometimes rode or hid inside the wolf, to leap out at an unaware target. If she trained enough with someone else (paper master or no) she could probably do similar tactics.
Bat: The bat comes in two sizes. The "small" bat is about the size of a small cat, and she uses it to fly into opponents' faces to distract them. The "large" bat, almost the size of a small pterodactyl, she uses to carry herself around in flight.
Humanoid: She uses a smaller version as an assistant--to help her carry things, etc. A larger version (see icon) she uses to catch and trap opponents, knock them over, etc. She also uses it to do things like break down walls or lift herself or another person up to high places. Like the wolf, she can also hide people inside it (usually her older sister, the team's long range specialist, who could remain in cover until she needed to emerge, shooting). Maggie does not usually use fully offensive tactics, but if she wanted to, the giant version of her paper man could certainly pummel a person to death or tear them apart.
Snake: When Maggie summons her snake familiar, it is usually enormous. She can use it to bite opponents or to climb up to tall targets. She sometimes has made a snake to "crawl" up to something, and then she transformed it into a bladed circle to slice it up.
Phoenix: This familiar is the size of a small plane--this one she actually operates from inside the familiar, and she can carry a number of other passengers inside the bird as well. It's too unwieldy to use more than briefly in combat, but it's a nice form of transportation. She actually managed to wrap her bird around a failing jet aircraft and landed it (after the plane's wings were cut off so it wasn't so heavy) but that was about her absolute limit, and she was exhausted afterwards. The giant bird requires a massive amount of paper to create, so it's not going to show up except in emergencies. She managed to use it to fly all the way from Japan to the United Kingdom, though presumably they stopped and took breaks.
MYSTERY SKILL!: Maggie also displayed some kind of weird, seeking/compass ability once. She folded paper into an arrow and focused on a friend she was looking for, and it pointed in that person's general direction. She only used the ability once and I have absolutely no idea how it worked, so I tend not to use it. If you ever watch R.O.D the TV and can explain it to me, that would be awesome.
Limitations: Obviously, first of all, you need to have paper on hand to use paper mastery. This can be any kind of paper--be it tree pulp copy paper or cloth fiber paper for currency or skin-based parchment or what have you--but it basically has to be a pulped fiber smashed flat, processed, and intended for writing upon. She can't manipulate digital books, or writing slates, etc. Paper mastery can "use up" paper, and if it's ripped out of a book and manipulated, you've lost the book forever.
Paper masters can strengthen paper enough to resist burning and getting wet, but cannot stop burning or water saturation completely, so those will eventually destroy any existing supply. Completely wet paper is useless (and completely burned paper is ash and therefore not paper anymore). Hit a paper master with a fire hose and they'll lose their ability to defend themselves quickly (but not instantly). Maggie is seen in R.O.D the TV briefly piloting a paper boat, so her ability to slow water saturation is pretty good (she was also with one of her sisters, so both of them may have been contributing).
Supersonic and subsonic waves, especially blasts, can be used to disrupt paper binding, folding, and animation. It cannot stop a papermaster from strengthening paper in their hands, so they can still use it for basic attack and defense. When dealing with an area protected by a constant, extreme subsonic vibration, Maggie could not create her familiars (but could use more simple applications of paper mastery).
Maggie's personal limitations are that she's poor for offensive ability--she's very much a defender, not a fighter--and has little to no long ranged skill (her aim is horrible--she threw a paper airplane at a TV from 5 feet away and ended up breaking the tv rather than push the "on" switch like she intended). She only fights with her familiars; I've never seen her actually try to strike someone with, say, a paper blade, even though most other paper masters do this. The only time I recall her fighting anything was a guard dog that was attacking her, and while she dodged it just fine, she did not land a blow. She also threatened someone with a paper blade, but did not use it. She has used paper blades on inanimate objects--for example, she used one to slice through a deadbolt.
Skills
Maggie was trained as an agent by Dokusensha, and has a standard set of "special agent" skills--she knows espionage terminology, knows how to case a building, how to find hidden objects, knows how to break into things, etc. She and her sisters have applied their agent training to their work as detectives, and she has general investigative skills to boot. She has some basic stealth skills, but I wouldn't call her a stealth expert (Average Joe won't notice her if she's got at least a little cover; Batman would see her as if a spotlight were shining down on her head).
Maggie is fluent in several languages--her native language is Cantonese (well, that's my assumption, but she's from Hong Kong so that makes the most sense) and she also speaks English and Japanese fluently. I assume she also speaks Mandarin fluently since she and Michelle are hired as local guides and probably Mandarin is the language of choice at Dokusensha's central HQ. Her sisters do translation work; Maggie's only problem is she gets lost in reading what she's supposed to translate to finish the job on time.
Maggie has an excellent memory, and can recall and apply most knowledge she absorbed when reading (for example, she read a book on acoustic theory, and then used that knowledge to make a silencer out of paper to thwart someone using sonic attacks).
Maggie's fighting skills are largely defensive, and it's very difficult to land a hit on her even if she's out of paper--she has dodged lightning quick attacks by killer Sonny Wong, for example. When she does take a blow, she sucks up the pain very well (she often takes a hit on purpose, to protect someone else or because there's no better defense). Presumably she has some hand to hand combat training as all agents would receive it, but she's seldom seen attacking anything, just defending (or attacking with her familiars). Maggie makes an excellent bodyguard, EXTREMELY quick to dive in front of someone and shield them (with paper, she has stopped bullets from hitting herself and their intended targets). She tends not to use lethal force, but obviously is willing to push homicidal sociopaths into exploding vats of ink when the situation calls for it.
Maggie's very most important skill, however, is that she makes delicious cake.
Gear
Maggie has a really cool GPS watch with a yin-yang on it; it syncs with her sisters' watches so they can find each other, but it also has general navigation uses.
She also has body suit she wears under her uniform that is presumably made of something like lightweight kevlar. The bodysuit is a black unitard that is sleeveless and goes down to the thighs. Maggie can also always be presumed to have at least one book and a pack of index cards on her, if not more, and she keeps them hidden in her sleeves (using paper mastery to keep them pliable and silent).
Although she has some real clothes, Maggie can use her paper mastery to make paper clothing, which appears real (but is apparently slightly uncomfortable for the wearer)--and as she tends to spend all her money on books, probably at least half her clothing is paper.
Paper Mastery
Of course, it should go without saying that this is OOC knowledge and I would appreciate no metagaming with this--but I hope that this is useful in explaining what she's capable of.
Maggie is a Paper Master. In a Paper Master's hands, paper can be shaped and re-shaped telekinetically, and its durability increased a hundred fold. Take something as thin as paper that is nearly unfoldable and unbreakable, and you get something that can slice through steel. Likewise, it can "catch" bullets and block attacks. Paper masters can bind, shape, and animate paper into a variety of useful forms and tools: ropes, staircases, self-propelling paper airplanes, and beyond.
In the various pieces of R.O.D media, there's a suggestion that while paper mastery is in part an inherited trait (a metahuman power or mutation in comics terms), there's also a psychological-psychic connection---that paper masters love books and reading so much, that the books (and by extension, any paper--which has the potential to hold a human being's creative energy) love them back. Maggie isn't just willing paper to catch bullets for her--in theory, the paper is also leaping out of her hand to protect her, ready to sacrifice itself for her. She has to be aware that someone's trying to shoot her, though. It's not a subconscious reaction, more of a symbiosis. The manga and anime also touch upon Paper Masters having a sort of "book empathy": Paper Masters "feel" what books "feel" ("This book wants you to read it" or expressing pain when seeing books burn), but that could also entirely be interpreted as their special little brand of bibliomaniacal insanity.
Paper masters' abilities reflect their individual wills and personalities. Maggie is by nature a protector, a guardian--so her defensive abilities are extremely strong. If she has enough paper to hand and you don't have a way to disable her paper mastery, it's going to be nearly impossible to land a shot on her--or anyone she's protecting. More spectacularly, she uses paper to create more guardians, bigger and stronger and faster than she can be on her own--animal shaped "familiars" that fight for her, shield her comrades with their bodies, and provide transport and other assistance. To an extent she can "see" through the eyes of her familiars (mostly the paper bird with which she uses to fly)--but she still needs to be close to them, and can't send them out long range. Even when they appear separate from her, she is actually connected to them through barely visible paper "strings," and she controls them like psychic marionettes.
Her most common familiars:
Wolf: Used most often for fighting, it bull rushes, bites, and strikes enemies with its forelimbs. When she was with her sisters, her younger sister sometimes rode or hid inside the wolf, to leap out at an unaware target. If she trained enough with someone else (paper master or no) she could probably do similar tactics.
Bat: The bat comes in two sizes. The "small" bat is about the size of a small cat, and she uses it to fly into opponents' faces to distract them. The "large" bat, almost the size of a small pterodactyl, she uses to carry herself around in flight.
Humanoid: She uses a smaller version as an assistant--to help her carry things, etc. A larger version (see icon) she uses to catch and trap opponents, knock them over, etc. She also uses it to do things like break down walls or lift herself or another person up to high places. Like the wolf, she can also hide people inside it (usually her older sister, the team's long range specialist, who could remain in cover until she needed to emerge, shooting). Maggie does not usually use fully offensive tactics, but if she wanted to, the giant version of her paper man could certainly pummel a person to death or tear them apart.
Snake: When Maggie summons her snake familiar, it is usually enormous. She can use it to bite opponents or to climb up to tall targets. She sometimes has made a snake to "crawl" up to something, and then she transformed it into a bladed circle to slice it up.
Phoenix: This familiar is the size of a small plane--this one she actually operates from inside the familiar, and she can carry a number of other passengers inside the bird as well. It's too unwieldy to use more than briefly in combat, but it's a nice form of transportation. She actually managed to wrap her bird around a failing jet aircraft and landed it (after the plane's wings were cut off so it wasn't so heavy) but that was about her absolute limit, and she was exhausted afterwards. The giant bird requires a massive amount of paper to create, so it's not going to show up except in emergencies. She managed to use it to fly all the way from Japan to the United Kingdom, though presumably they stopped and took breaks.
MYSTERY SKILL!: Maggie also displayed some kind of weird, seeking/compass ability once. She folded paper into an arrow and focused on a friend she was looking for, and it pointed in that person's general direction. She only used the ability once and I have absolutely no idea how it worked, so I tend not to use it. If you ever watch R.O.D the TV and can explain it to me, that would be awesome.
Limitations: Obviously, first of all, you need to have paper on hand to use paper mastery. This can be any kind of paper--be it tree pulp copy paper or cloth fiber paper for currency or skin-based parchment or what have you--but it basically has to be a pulped fiber smashed flat, processed, and intended for writing upon. She can't manipulate digital books, or writing slates, etc. Paper mastery can "use up" paper, and if it's ripped out of a book and manipulated, you've lost the book forever.
Paper masters can strengthen paper enough to resist burning and getting wet, but cannot stop burning or water saturation completely, so those will eventually destroy any existing supply. Completely wet paper is useless (and completely burned paper is ash and therefore not paper anymore). Hit a paper master with a fire hose and they'll lose their ability to defend themselves quickly (but not instantly). Maggie is seen in R.O.D the TV briefly piloting a paper boat, so her ability to slow water saturation is pretty good (she was also with one of her sisters, so both of them may have been contributing).
Supersonic and subsonic waves, especially blasts, can be used to disrupt paper binding, folding, and animation. It cannot stop a papermaster from strengthening paper in their hands, so they can still use it for basic attack and defense. When dealing with an area protected by a constant, extreme subsonic vibration, Maggie could not create her familiars (but could use more simple applications of paper mastery).
Maggie's personal limitations are that she's poor for offensive ability--she's very much a defender, not a fighter--and has little to no long ranged skill (her aim is horrible--she threw a paper airplane at a TV from 5 feet away and ended up breaking the tv rather than push the "on" switch like she intended). She only fights with her familiars; I've never seen her actually try to strike someone with, say, a paper blade, even though most other paper masters do this. The only time I recall her fighting anything was a guard dog that was attacking her, and while she dodged it just fine, she did not land a blow. She also threatened someone with a paper blade, but did not use it. She has used paper blades on inanimate objects--for example, she used one to slice through a deadbolt.
Skills
Maggie was trained as an agent by Dokusensha, and has a standard set of "special agent" skills--she knows espionage terminology, knows how to case a building, how to find hidden objects, knows how to break into things, etc. She and her sisters have applied their agent training to their work as detectives, and she has general investigative skills to boot. She has some basic stealth skills, but I wouldn't call her a stealth expert (Average Joe won't notice her if she's got at least a little cover; Batman would see her as if a spotlight were shining down on her head).
Maggie is fluent in several languages--her native language is Cantonese (well, that's my assumption, but she's from Hong Kong so that makes the most sense) and she also speaks English and Japanese fluently. I assume she also speaks Mandarin fluently since she and Michelle are hired as local guides and probably Mandarin is the language of choice at Dokusensha's central HQ. Her sisters do translation work; Maggie's only problem is she gets lost in reading what she's supposed to translate to finish the job on time.
Maggie has an excellent memory, and can recall and apply most knowledge she absorbed when reading (for example, she read a book on acoustic theory, and then used that knowledge to make a silencer out of paper to thwart someone using sonic attacks).
Maggie's fighting skills are largely defensive, and it's very difficult to land a hit on her even if she's out of paper--she has dodged lightning quick attacks by killer Sonny Wong, for example. When she does take a blow, she sucks up the pain very well (she often takes a hit on purpose, to protect someone else or because there's no better defense). Presumably she has some hand to hand combat training as all agents would receive it, but she's seldom seen attacking anything, just defending (or attacking with her familiars). Maggie makes an excellent bodyguard, EXTREMELY quick to dive in front of someone and shield them (with paper, she has stopped bullets from hitting herself and their intended targets). She tends not to use lethal force, but obviously is willing to push homicidal sociopaths into exploding vats of ink when the situation calls for it.
Maggie's very most important skill, however, is that she makes delicious cake.
Gear
Maggie has a really cool GPS watch with a yin-yang on it; it syncs with her sisters' watches so they can find each other, but it also has general navigation uses.
She also has body suit she wears under her uniform that is presumably made of something like lightweight kevlar. The bodysuit is a black unitard that is sleeveless and goes down to the thighs. Maggie can also always be presumed to have at least one book and a pack of index cards on her, if not more, and she keeps them hidden in her sleeves (using paper mastery to keep them pliable and silent).
Although she has some real clothes, Maggie can use her paper mastery to make paper clothing, which appears real (but is apparently slightly uncomfortable for the wearer)--and as she tends to spend all her money on books, probably at least half her clothing is paper.