Home | Characters | Background | News Articles | Game Summaries | Calendar | Links

Livewire

Chicago Police Dept. surveillance photo of subject "Shocker"

Left ear pierced six times, right ear pierced four times, belly-button piercing, tatoo of snarling wolf on right shoulder blade, tatoo of fairy dragon on left hip and thigh, tatoo of thunderbolt on right forearm, various scars on arms and back. 

As a result of her powers, her eyes glow bluish-white, but when discharged they’re grey.  Dresses in gothic/punk clothing, always wears mirrored sunglasses.

Born and raised in a suburb of Detroit on August 2nd, 1981, Angelina Preston, fourth of five children, came from a lower middle-class dysfunctional family.  With an alcoholic father who had a hard time holding a job, the family lived in constant fear of abuse.  When Angie was 14, her father, drunk and unemployed yet again, took his frustrations out on his family.  As a result of his actions, their mother subsequently died from her injuries.  Both girls were hospitalized.  Their father suffered several stab wounds, delivered by Angie when she came to the aid of her youngest sister.  Once thier father had been sent to prison, the four children who remained at home were sent to different foster homes.  Angie found it difficult to adjust, and frequently had to be relocated.  After multiple attempts, she finally succeeded in eluding the police and ran away at 15.  She made her way to Chicago where she lived on the streets doing whatever she could to survive.  She fell in with a group of goths, who showed her more than just how to survive on the streets. 

One evening, high on various substances, the small band found themselves lying on the tarmac of the warehouse district, watching the lightening storm which loomed overhead.  As the rain began to fall, a local street gang, bent on violence, beseiged the group, chasing them thru the warehouses, until they cornered their prey between a building and an electrical fence.  A struggle ensued, but the gothics were outnumbered.  Randomly picking Angie to be an example, they flung her against the fence.  At the same moment, lightening struck.  It took the EMS personal nearly an hour, and several charges from the difibrilator to bring Angie back to a point where they felt she could be moved safely.  During the ride to the hospital, the ambulance experienced equipment failures - lights, displays, radio, and finally the engine.  As the ambulance coasted to a stop, Angie regained consciousness, eyes glowing like sparklers.  When the paramedics tried to stop her from leaving, static electricity shocked them into unconsciousness.

Angie tried returning to her goth friends, but from their initial reaction of her new abilities, she felt she was too freakish even for them.  And so she found herself back on the streets.  Wanting to get back at the gang which had caused her transformation, she joined a rival gang, who were only too glad to accept her.  The called themselves the Avengers, and had dedicated themselves of ridding the neighborhood of other gangs.  Within a few months, with Angie’s help, they had decimated the rival, and made a name for themselves.  Angie, or Shocker, as she became known, decided to stay with them - this new crowd seemed to like her, and at last she felt she had a place in the world.

During this time, she found her first love, Zac, who died Halloween night after taking tainted drugs - someone else’s idea of a “trick”.  Angie went on a rampage, hitting all the local drug dealer she knew or could find.  Several rival gangs, some backed by drug dealers, banded together to wipe out Shocker and the Avengers.  On Thanksgiving weekend in one of the largest gang wars ever seen in Chicago, a quarter of the warehouse district was under seige by the massive assaults.  Only the arrival of PRIMUS kept things from getting completely out of control.  In the furious fighting which followed, Angie discovered she had a limit to the amount of electricity she could hold and generate.  In effect, her battery had drained it’s charge.  She barely had the strength to elude the authorities, and remains on the run.