Brandish

"It felt weird to tell my fourteen year old daughter to break a man’s arm, once upon a time. We adapt."

- Beacon 8.9

Carol Dallon, known publicly as , is the wife of Mark Dallon and the mother of Victoria Dallon. She is also the adoptive mother of Amy Dallon, and a member of New Wave.

Personality
Carol was a skilled lawyer. She worked for the same firm as Alan Barnes, and the two were friends. She promised herself that she would strike a balance between her two careers when she joined New Wave. She tended to cope with stress by focusing on the business side of her life. She was sometimes afraid of the dark as a result of her trauma, sleeping with the lights on in her room, and generally keeping the lights on around the house.

She disliked using abbreviations such as "lol".

Relationships
Carol had severe trust issues, stemming from her Trigger Event - she had grown to trust one of her kidnappers to an extent, and felt betrayed when he tried to execute her. Something about Marquis reminded her of him, perhaps the fact that she liked him on a level. He didn't fit with her view of the world - criminal, yet with a code.

Victoria
Carol felt she was only able to trust her daughter, Victoria, because she was hers - a part of her from the very beginning. She was willing to believe Glory Girl's excuses about having difficulty holding back with her power.

Amy
Amy Dallon, her adoptive daughter, felt - correctly - that Carol never really wanted her. After her husband received a head injury, she blamed her for not healing him. Carol was constantly wary of Amy.Treating like a monster might be a little overboard, but they're accurate in reading scenes where Amy was neglected. Carol's word choice is one hint here - you can read the interlude that was just covered and note how Carol refers to Amy vs. how she refers to Victoria. The words aren't hateful, but Amy is 'amy' and Victoria is 'my daughter'. She says, outright, "I don't want her" while the child is in earshot, and then when Lady Photon says "You could grow to love and trust that little girl, too.” Carol's (later, connecting) thought is "Liar". Look at Amy's conversation with Gallant... "Carol never really wanted me. Mark is clinically depressed, so as nice as he is, he’s too focused on himself to really be a dad." Interlude 11.h, It had always been Victoria, only Victoria, who made her feel like she had a family here.  Then later, same interlude, What Amy felt from her ‘mother’ was a chill. She knew that she was only justifying the darker suspicions Carol had harbored towards her since she was first brought into the family. It was doubly crushing now, because Amy knew about Marquis. Amy knew that Carol was thinking the same thing she was.  Carol didn't reach out, she wasn't warm, she wasn't a mother. At best, Amy was a person living in their house. At worst, Amy was someone suspicious, Marquis' daughter. So Amy never really had a 'home', a safe haven to retreat to. If you want to read between the lines, the fact that she'd go out at night to visit the hospital (and that nobody was stopping her) might indicate more about her feelings at home. She wasn't mistreated. She got fed, she got clothes. Mark (Flashbang) even tried to be a warmer dad when he was up to it, but that's something as rare as the sun coming out in the UK - brief and unpredictable bouts of good in the midst of a perpetually overcast setting. In the end, all she really had was Victoria. - Comment of RPR.net by Wildbow

Mark Dallon
Carol and Mark were married for around two decades. They still have strong feelings for each other, however their relationship is uneasy, they tend to grow distant from time to time, even split up for a while, only to reconnect again later.

Neil Pelham
Carol and Neil had an affair early in their relationship, both of them were with their future spouses at the time. Carol pleads to Victoria, that she is not his daughter, however Carol struggles to remember completely.

Appearance
As Brandish, Carol wears a white costume with orange trim and a crossed-blade symbol. She keeps her hair short.

Abilities and Powers
Carol Dallon has the ability to create various simple weapons and martial shields out of burning 'hard' light, or light augmented by concussive or kinetic force. Further she can condense herself into a bouncing sphere of hard light, effectively invincible and untouchable at the cost of all mobility.

She described her ball form as "condensed into a point, surrounded by a layered, spherical force field". It could fly away whenever it was hit, or she could exercise some control over the direction. She could choose what posture she was in when transitioning between forms, allowing her to more easily recover from falls. It was orange-yellow in color. While in her ball form, Brandish is in a kind of 'stasis'. This allows her to do a combination attack with Flashbang, in which she takes some of his timed grenades into her ball form and unleashes them when she comes out. While in her Breaker form, Brandish cannot see or hear anything, only able to track the world around her with another kind of awareness. This essentially meant she was trapped in the dark whenever she used this form, which just so happens to be her exact phobia.

Brandish is martial combatant capable of delivering explosively powerful strikes or letting her weapons shear through flesh and bone without resistance, burning and cauterizing any wound. They could slash through Marquis' bone plates and could even shear through steel. The weapons "looked as though they were made from lightning." They could be a sword, a pair of swords, a crude bludgeon, or a pair of axes, among other things. . Brandish can control how damaging the specific instance of weapon is.

She has some resistance to blinding lights, likely so she isn't blinded by the light of her own creations.

Background
Carol triggered while kidnapped,He’d tried to attack them? Carol couldn’t understand it. He was the one who’d taken care of them. When he’d appeared, she’d been happy. And now it felt like that had been ruined, spoiled. She felt betrayed and she couldn’t understand why. Again, the gun fired. She flinched, and not because of the noise. It was like she’d been slapped. Then silence. Silence, no hunger, no pain, no sense of betrayal. Even Sarah and the wall of light she’d put together were gone. A flat plain stretched out around her, but she had no body. She could see in every direction. A crack split the ground. Once the dust had settled, nothing happened for a long time. More cracks. It’s an egg, she realized, just in time to see it hatch. The egg’s occupant tore free from the crack, unfolding from a condensed point to grow larger with every moment and movement. Others were hatching from the same egg, spreading out like sparks from the shell of a firework. Each unfolding into something vast and incomprehensible within seconds of its birth. But her attention was on the first. She felt it reach out and connect with another that shared a similar trajectory. Still more were doing the same, pairing off. Forming into trios, in some cases, but most chose to form pairs. A mate? A partner? Each settled into a position around the ruined egg, embracing their chosen companions, rubbing against, into and through one another as they continued to grow. The egg vibrated. Or did it? No, it was an illusion. There were multiple copies of the egg, multiple versions, and they each stirred, deviating from one another until subtle double images appeared. Then, one by one, they crumpled into a single point. The egg at the center of the formation of these creatures was the last, and for the briefest of moments, it roiled with the pressure and energy of all of the others. Then it detonated, and the creatures came alive, soaring out into the vastness of the void, trails of dust following in their wake, each with a partner, a companion, traveling in a different direction. And she was back in the dark room, staring at the man. - Excerpt from Interlude 15.x about to be executed by her captors, feeling betrayed that the captor who had fed them, whom she had liked, tried to kill her. She killed him with her power. Either she or Lady Photon (who triggered first) had a connection with a shard, which then budded to the other.

She joined the Brockton Bay Brigade during a period when there were few heroes in Brockton Bay, without the Unwritten Rules. There she met her husband, Mark Dallon. They joined New Wave when it was founded.

She had Victoria at 18, she stopped attending therapy around the same time.

She tried for a normal life and began a career as a criminal lawyer.

She was persuaded to adopt Panacea when they found her in Marquis' lair, out of worries that another group might seek to use her for whatever powers she developed. She accepted in the end because she had a job, while her sister already had two children.

Boston Games
Halfheartedly tried to return runaway girl into the fold. Barely evaded obliteration.

Story Start
With the change over from the Brigade to New Wave and subsequent tragedies, Carol was effectively forced to act as manager for the team; handling legal affairs, public relations, and media contacts.

When the E88's identities were revealed Brandish and Flashbang confronted Krieg and his subordinates with New Wave.

Carol fought Leviathan alongside the rest of New Wave.

Post-Leviathan
Following the deaths of much of New Wave and her husband's head injury, Carol considered disbanding New Wave. She received a letter from Dragon warning her that Marquis believed his daughter was in danger.

Post-Slaughterhouse Nine
Was working late when her colleague Alan got back to her over a trifling matter.

Using a tip from Tattletale she was able to find her daughters only to discover that she had lost them; Amy had mutilated Victoria with her power, and was subsequently imprisoned in the birdcage.

Gold Morning
Carol briefly reunited with both of her daughters; she saw them for only a short time before the fighting began in earnest.

Early-Ward
Carol was set up in a house in the suburbs of the city. She tried to get her daughters into the same house, in the hopes of forcing a reconciliation; this backfired and estranged her from Victoria.

She acted as a lawyer for the Wardens.

Post-Fallen fall
Carol continued lawyering for the remains of the Wardens under Dragon's leadership, but returned to cape activities as part of a minor team.

Post-Goddess' Takeover
Brandish joined her daughter's team on a revenge mission to Earth N. In the final fight of it she got accidentally mauled by The Wretch, severely damaging her head and spine. She had to be brought to Amy on Earth Shin.

Post-Time Bubble Pop
When Breakthrough visited Shin, Carol expressed concern for Amy.

Once Shin Diplomatic Crisis was resolved Carol returned to The City alongside Victoria.

Carol moved in with Crystal for a time, they prepared to evacuate from the city together.

Post-Attack on Teacher
She had a talk with her daughter about Victoria's father.

Carol reunited with her sister.

She was invited into the Wardens' situation room during the second Shin crisis. Carol helped Vista to deal with Narwhal, and participated in negotiations with The Red Queen.

The Ice Breaks
Carol appeared in the Wardens headquarters after the ice broke.

She met Breakthrough, when they were returning from The Firmament, and led Victoria to Amy.

Carol and Mark offered Victoria's plague to Amy.

Trivia

 * Brandish was initially classified as a Changer instead of a Breaker.