05/02/1995 - Ruth is born to Samuel and Rebecca Maxwell in New York City.
08/07/2000 - Samuel and Rebecca have increasing arguments about Ruth's religious upbringing. Rebecca becomes increasingly fundamentalist.
02/14/2008 - Samuel and Rebecca divorce. Samuel moves out and finds work in Metropolis salvaging scrapped super-science. Rebecca wins a battle for sole custody and alimony using false allegations.
12/31/2009 - Ruth isn't really interested in fireworks or eggnog, and goes to bed early.
01/01/2010 - Ruth wakes up nauseous and spinning rapidly, trapped in her covers, tangled in between the ceiling and her fan.
01/03/2010 - Rebecca subjects Ruth to weekly exorcisms of increasing violence and severity every Sunday in an attempt to purge her of her metahuman abilities.
05/02/2010 - After a particularly heated argument, Rebecca throws Ruth out onto the street into the rain at night. Ruth struggles not to drown and to keep sane, and is rescued hours later.
05/04/2010 - Ruth attempts to kill herself, but recovers. Custody is given to Samuel.
08/21/2011 - Energy from an explosion damages Samuel's mind and body, making him indifferent towards others and unable to care for Ruth. She hides this as much as possible, staying away from home while using his debit card to care for herself.
12/24/2011 - Rebecca discovers Samuel's disability and starts a new custody case. She convinces the court she has changed with testimony from a telepath, and wins back custody of Ruth.
12/26/2011 - Ruth runs away. She lives as a vagrant and petty thief, staying with friends when able and keeping on the move from city to city.
05/02/2013 - Ruth begins work as a powered courier with Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg & Holliway, under the codename Aerial.
05/20/2013 - Aerial's official intro video is posted online, beginning a series of videos following her exploits.
Trusting - Ruth takes everyone at face value to start out with. You get one free lie. One free betrayal. She can't afford to doubt everyone's claims in a world where the usual is crazy and people mess with the fundamental forces of nature. So Ruth's a nice girl, and she wants to help people, and you can take advantage of her naivety. Once. And then you will ever after be her enemy.
Loyalty - Ruth's loyalty is earned slowly, considered carefully, and when awarded is nigh unbreakable. She'll follow someone she respects and trusts all the way into villainy if needed, rationalizing her decisions all the way.
Insecure - Ruth doesn't trust herself. She doesn't see herself as an inherently good person, worthy of the same respect as others. She wants to change this though, and craves approval and praise and positive attention. She takes criticism deeply and internally, doubting herself and looking to others as a standard for goodness to follow.
Survivalism - Ruth intends to live. If she can, she intends for everyone else to live too. She doesn't tend to value things apart from what they provide for survival or raw utility. Her idea of good gifts are cans of food, a sturdy rope, a guide to edible plants… In her mind, giving someone a meal is giving them another day of life, and that's how she expresses her friendship. That's all anything boils down to. How long will this keep someone alive? That's its value.
Creativity - In her idle time, Ruth considers ways that powers could be combined, ways the world could be different, drawings and sketches, possible ways to mix different musical songs, scenery she would like to film, storyboards for videos… she's a fountain of ideas, most useless or poorly conceived. She's a dreamer who constantly asks, "What if?" This is the bright side of her creativity, and it can turn very dark when things go desperate.
Desperation - When the chips are down, when herself or her friends are presented with a credible threat, when situations go from bad to worse, her curiosity can turn into a violent desperation. She will throw morals and assumptions out the window and pull out unexpected tricks, and can get downright vicious and fight dirty. With her mind racing as hard as it can, her reflexes increase to the point where she can pull off some unpredictable and astounding stunts thought up on the fly. Whatever it takes to make sure she and everyone she cares about comes out alive, even if that means crossing a line.
Motivation - Ruth feels like her real life is pretty terrible, honestly. But she's thankful for it, because it could be worse, and she'd feel ungrateful to complain about or squander a gift like she has. She can fly. So many people dream of that, and she can do it. Doesn't she owe it to those people to use it, to share it with them? Going out in costume as Aerial is escapism for her. A chance to be something better than she is, an improved fictionalized self that she can use to get away from it all. A warm light of purpose and goodness to hold for herself. Simple and naive, perhaps, but she's a young hero feeling out her way.
Goals - Make the world a better place. Less people dying. Less people hurting others. Less people getting hurt. Pretty cliched, yes, but for her sometimes it really is that simple. She's somewhat lost in the world, and on one hand just wants a stable reliable job she can count on, and on the other hand wants to sacrifice what she has for the sake of bringing others together. She wants to see everyone working together.
Upside-Down World - Ever since her power activated, Ruth can't shake the idea that the sky is down and the Earth hangs overhead. She flies in a way she feels is upside-down, to match how other people walk around and what they expect. But in her mind's eye, everything is upside-down, and when she wants to get comfortable, it's usually on the ceiling.
Inertialess Flight - Ruth's maximum flight speed is the speed of sound through whatever medium she is traveling through. In normal air, this is 768mph. Underwater, this is 3316mph. In near-Earth space, her speed caps at 814834mph. Ruth does not have to accelerate or brake, and can instantly change her speed and direction. Collisions with objects are governed by her kinetic evasion. Ruth cannot turn her flight off even when asleep or unconscious. When not consciously directing her flight, she drifts with the wind and floats upwards and to the west. She can affect up to 50lbs (mass, not weight) of additional materials to take with her, but any objects to be carried with her must be tightly held or secured to her body in some way. This effect suppresses air and water resistance as well, making it easier to move out of her way when it touches her.
Gravity Immunity - Ruth has no mass. Gravity powers or effects won't work on her directly. She is not drawn towards the center of the planet, but keeps up with it as it moves through space only because she moves along with the air around her, and at her conscious direction. She has a tendency to drift upwards and westward as the planet spins away from her.
Kinetic Evasion - Ruth has no mass. Rather than impacting Ruth, physical blows and attacks moving slower than the speed of sound effortlessly move or stop her, since she lacks any inertia. At the moment of contact Ruth accelerates to the speed of the blow or brakes to the speed of the object she hits, transforming it all into knockback. If someone punches her, she flies backwards from their fist as soon as it touches, taking no damage from the blow. If she flies into a building, she stops instantly when she brushes against it. Multiple impacts in succession repeat the process, each changing her velocity, allowing her to effectively evade physical attacks automatically. If she's sandwiched between two objects, she flies out from between them if there's room to do so. If there's nowhere open to be pushed into, she can get caught and crushed. Objects moving faster than the speed of sound are only partially affected. She is not bulletproof. Ruth will accelerate to the speed of sound to match it as best she can, and the object will hit her as if it were going slower by that much. This effect is what limits her top flight speed as well. She can't push through her own sonic boom, so she can't go faster than sound.
Throw/Catch Objects - Objects which are released while in-flight immediately cease being affected, regaining their original mass while retaining the same speed. This can turn objects into dangerous projectiles. Used to its fullest, this allows Ruth to hurl an object up to 50lbs in mass (less whatever else she's carrying), at roughly the speed of sound. She's not coordinated enough to pull that off properly with any degree of aiming or skill, and smaller objects and slower speeds are more effective for her. A handful of gravel works about the same as a shotgun blast. The sharp-edged tops from cans can be used like throwing stars. Typically to launch something she will jerk forwards, release the object while traveling, and then jerk to a stop again and back up to where she was quickly, but she can also spin in place and let go. She can also catch objects by doing the same backwards. Let something hit her, grab it to cancel its mass, then stop.
Altitude Adaptation - Ruth's frequent trips to the upper reaches of the atmosphere have given her an acclimation to rapid changes in pressure and high altitudes. Her blood is thick and bright with more red cells, and those red cells hold oxygen more effectively. She doesn't get out of breath easily at low altitudes, and can breathe comfortably at 18000ft. She doesn't get altitude sickness. Breathing becomes increasingly difficult until about 26000ft, where she has to start holding her breath. She can hold her breath for about five minutes.
Law Firm - Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg & Holliway has hired Ruth as a courier. This is a job that can range from part-time to full-time depending on demand, has nice health insurance and hazard pay, and gives her an in with a law firm in case anybody's bothering her. No real favor-pulling ability yet, she's on the lowest rungs.
Flight Suit - In exchange for her service in raising satellites into orbit without the pesky fuel cost, Tony Stark built a flight suit for Aerial which allows her to operate in space and which amplifies her power's carrying capacity. The flight suit is a "simple" (in Tony's words) Stark-tech model, providing life support, navigation, communications, and power boosting. It weighs about 20 lbs, composed primarily of plastics. The suit is airtight and refreshes the internal oxygen. The head and body are hard armored segments, able to stop most civilian ballistic weaponry, and contain pressurized atmosphere. The limbs are flexible, provide elastic pressure, resistant to cutting or puncturing, but not bulletproof. If damaged, the suit will self-seal with a thin layer of barrier gel. The suit is insulated and climate controlled to protect against temperatures from -150F to 250F in the lower atmosphere, and its protection grows with decreased pressure to withstand the hazards of space flight. It has a thin layer of lead-polymer foil which stops and absorbs radiation. The helmet has a visor that blocks glare, a HUD that tracks threats and allies in 3D, cameras that provide a 360 degree view, GPS and altimeter, flashlight, radio, and cell phone systems. It amplifies her biometric field and allows her to charge up an object that would normally be too massive to carry with her power. She can nullify the mass out of an object she maintains contact with gradually over time, until it becomes massless and she can take it with her.
Barrier Gel - The flight suit has advanced chemical pellets to be launched from various apertures on its surface. On impact, the pellets break open into a rapidly-expanding suppressive gel that forms a cushioning and entrapping barrier. It is sticky and vicsous, attempting to draw people and objects it touches into itself, grow around them, and thicken into a sturdy barricade that can resist 75 ton attacks from within and without. It is breathable and filtering, so people locked inside won't suffocate, even underwater or in toxic gasses. It is fireproof and electrically insulative, and grows preferentially towards heat sources, so can be used to put out fires. It is translucent, allowing for rough identification of the contents. It is soft, stretchy, resilient, and exceptionally difficult to tear oneself free from, requiring about 50 tons of force to power through. It dissolves completely in even a minor amount of alcohol.
Knots and Rope - Since Ruth's mass cancellation transfers down ropes and bindings to the objects she carries, she's learned a variety of knots well enough to tie them blindfolded and in zero-g, and knows their various uses to apply them appropriately and securely, and release when she needs them to. She can make nets, throw a lasso, and secure objects properly.
Videography - Ruth handles a lot of her own public relations as Aerial, posting videos online as Aerial and answering questions and comments. She does this partly to keep herself accountable to people, to explain her reasoning for doing things, and partly for the raw pleasure of going to beautiful places and filming them. She also sometimes records powered battles for public record to help heroes defend themselves against false allegations, or to incriminate those who cross the line. She also uses this to analyze the powers and capacities of those she films, trying to catch a glimpse into how they work and what she should expect.
Paperwork - Low rank on the totem pole at the law firm means all the extra paperwork lands in your inbox. Ruth's gotten great at filling out all the forms, crossing the t's and dotting the i's, going back and capitalizing the I's, handling everything in triplicate, taking judicious notes, and delivering the mail. Ruth doesn't seem to mind the tedium.
Danmaku - In order to try and improve her reflexes and control over her power, she plays scrolling shooter games that flood the screen with hundreds or thousands of bullets to dodge. Games with twitch reflexes and pattern-matching are her best.
Preparedness - Scissors, bandages, bottled water, peanut butter, prepaid cell phone, journals, mechanical pencils, pens, regular pencils, dried fruit, maps, yarn, chains, rope, paper clips, iodine, razor knife, beef jerky, lighter, magnets, string, flint and steel, binoculars, and a number of other objects of mundane utility fill her backpack. Ruth doesn't take any of the modern conveniences for granted. She knows life can change in an instant, and her backpack has what she needs in it to last long enough to start again from scratch.
No Leverage - Ruth has to brace herself by gripping around an object from opposite sides in order to push or pull it. For example, to type on a keyboard, she uses her knee or other hand on the underside to hold herself down. Otherwise she would float up instead of pushing the key down. She cannot fly into things to push them, or turn her flight off and push them like a normal person. When she tries to punch someone, her fist stops at the point of contact and she flies backwards instead.
Water - Water is the bane of Ruth's existence. She cannot push through the barrier between air and water from either side without something to brace against, and this means if someone pushes her underwater she's trapped under until she can find something to push against to force herself through into the air. In a pool deep enough that she can't touch the bottom and the surface at the same time, she has to find a ladder and haul herself out. If she's pushed underwater in the ocean, she has to explore coastlines for something, anything that she could grab and pull herself out with. But the absolute worst offender is rain, and rain deserves a special mention all on its own.
Rain - Millions of drops all falling from the sky, each one making her try to dodge between them. A light sprinkle nails her to the ground and sends her uncontrollably skidding and shooting about every time one hits her until she finds the safety of some bridge or awning, where she becomes trapped and unable to go back out into the rain. A heavier rain doesn't have enough space between the drops for her to dodge. In those cases her flight power mashes her into the ground as hard as it can, face-up or face-down each presenting their own kind of drowning risk. She has a seizure as her power freaks out, giving her backlash after backlash. The effect is crushingly painful, exhausting, and mentally traumatizing. Ruth often attempts suicide after being caught out in the rain, and usually isn't fully stable again for about a week.
Entanglement - While Ruth's power keeps her safe from most blows, it also blindly allows her to be cornered and trapped. Pinning her into a corner where there's no way out, via multiple attacks made simultaneously, nets or ropes to anchor her to something heavier than she can lift, or just abusing her power against her to force her backward into a trap are all possible and will prevent her from being able to dodge effectively. When she becomes trapped and bound in this way her power gives her a disruptive backlash from trying to be pushed every direction at once. And with nowhere to dodge to, physical attacks start hitting her fully.
Non-Speedster Reflexes - Ruth has a fast flight speed, but she is not a speedster. Her brain does not go fast when she does. Her mind and senses cannot keep up, and she is only human in this regard. The way her kinetic evasion makes her react to blows doesn't warn her or ask her opinion on the matter, and the sudden change is always disorienting and jarring. She can't make sharp turns down streets at very high speeds because she can't time the direction change properly. She can't pick people out of a crowd when moving quickly, and any sounds she hears are Doppler shifted.
Bleeder - Ruth's blood won't clot on its own when she's wounded without first being bandaged or contained somehow. If she's cut, her blood will continue flying on its own power out of the wound and float in the air, instead of staying at the wound to solidify like a normal person's. Instead her blood dries and clots in the air, falling as red dust. If she's bandaged, the blood will be contained against the wound and clot normally.
It's hard for Ruth to keep secret that she's Aerial, and for the most part she's given up on trying. Her flight pattern is distinctive, and it doesn't turn off, so it's easy to recognize that zig-zag bouncy floating whether she's in or out of costume.
Aerial has two online channels where she posts the videos she records covering meta-activities, analysis of powers, and gratuitous scenery shots. One is public and videos are edited to hide identifying bystanders and any references that might out anybody. The private channel is invite-only and is shared with other heroes and law enforcement. It holds the raw footage and has more technical encoding to it about what her suit's sensors read.
Aerial works as a powered courier for Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg & Holliway. She is usually available to deliver packages on short notice, and can preserve fragile or delicate objects in zero-gravity, as well as maintaining chain of custody for testing samples or evidence. She's also been spotted raising satellites into orbit and bringing supplies to space stations.
