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11. Black Alice (Lori Zechlin)
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Black Alice is a girl touched with magical abilities who had briefly been tapped by the Birds of Prey before everything went to shit. Early on, the Shadowpact referred us to Dayton, hoping to get us linked up with somebody with enough power that they could consider her a "magical nuke", with enough strength to maybe distract the Spectre for a second.

Enter Alice, a moody teenager, more goth and scene than emo, who spends her days smoking weed in the parking lot of Denny's. When we met Alice, we found her difficult to deal with, as well as learned her power - to emulate the abilities of someone else's magic.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/4/8/AAOJ0pAADbWQ.jpg
That's Blue Devil, Enchantress, Etrigan, Misfit, Nightshade, Phantom Stranger, Zatanna, and Constantine. Of course, if we really want her to be at full strength, then we need her to emulate someone else who we need to get to full strength.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/4/9/AAOJ0pAADbWR.png
So Alice is really cool in terms of abilities. In terms of how she uses them? Wellllll don't tell her I said this, but it gets a little dorky. Normally it's just she gets mad and turns into Etrigan and breathes fire on someone, or she tries to look cool and turns into Nightshade, but recently she decided she thought she'd look cool by turning into Constantine which really has just cemented something about her:

She's a poser. A total poser.

Alice suffers from self-esteem issues that aren't normally seen due to her putting up a front of indifference and indignance. She is more likely to come across as just a teenager who is flaunts her innate ability and thinks she's better than everyone else, when at core, there's a scared girl whose father, one half of her only family, got Equated. She used her abilities to keep her and her dad safe for a bit, but we had to pluck her out of Dayton (apparently canon) before the Spectre got her. And he got close!

Alice came as a package deal with the other half of her family - a dog named Rover. Rover is very dumb. He thinks to play ball is to slowly nudge a ball back and forth between him and you. If you toss the ball, he gets upset, and probably scared. Data 7 tried to date him once to make Pixie jealous, and I don't think any single person or animal understood what was going on. I mean, look at this dumbass:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/5/9/AAOJ0pAADbTT.png
Anyway, Alice had trouble finding a place, but over time, she's set up a few friendships. First was with Brennus (MI's magician son of Count Vertigo). Brennus is a very genuine guy who likes food and wears his heart on his sleeve for the most part. He's also tuff. Alice grew to like this and found herself crushing on him, which went bad when she kissed him and he had to tell her he was gay. Lots of teenage drama to unpack there, but she sucker-punched him at some point to "get back at him" which is totally not okay Alice, Brennus did nothing wrong.

A second of Alice's big relationships is with Pepper Spray (Inviso's chemist character). Now, Pepper had some issues with making friends, getting bullied, and such early on. It's no surprise she attached herself to a loner character in Alice. Alice puts on a tough front, and it's that front that Pepper found herself attaching to as a shield. This is interesting because Alice is sort of bullshit, but Pepper shields herself in the bullshit to give herself some semblance of strength (which is really Pepper in a nutshell). Also, Alice smokes a lot of weed and got Pepper onto it.

An interesting aspect of the Alice/Pepper friendship is that since Alice is the one that presents as strong (and lies about being older than 17), Pepper has leeched off of that in a way where it would be appropriate to call Pepper in more of the sidekick role - at least, from my perspective. Alice calls the shots, has the strong personality - she's the one in charge. And she needs someone to sort of boss around, like Pepper. It's a way for Alice to get her self-esteem up. And then for Pepper, she sort of just needs a friend who can take care of her, which is why she adapts well to the subservient position. It's a weird symbiotic friendship between two girls who NEVER would have been friends in high school or college. And it's so unique in that PC's are main characters - it's not often one falls into a more sidekick-type role (except when Data 7 serves a rat who is the boss of his gang).

A third relationship is the role model she has in Nightshade - a member of the Shadowpact, mistress of the Shadowlands, ex-Suicide Squad member, fashionista, and totally cool drink sipper. Alice needed a mentor - that's a running theme for those of us who are "Eighth Age magicians". See, the Seventh Age of Magic is ending thanks to the Spectre, so those of us in the Eighth Age will either help bring magic back around or be the last dregs of a dying concept. So Alice of course would only want to learn from somebody as dark as her to fit the aesthetic and cool enough where Alice doesn't have to put up a front about thinking they're uncool. And oh boy, is Alice a little sycophant, sitting in her chair with Nightshade, sipping a drink along with Nightshade... Eve seems to like it, so it works out, but still, it's entertaining Alice in a way that, while it's important for her to learn, might be a little unhealthy in the way she likes to set herself above others.