Laura Drake (38167th Universe)
The 38167th Universe's version of Laura Drake, whose full name was Laura Phoebe Drake, was native to New Flaversham like her corresponding Jenny Everywhere. The two had a typically muddled relationship, remaining friends and partners even as Laura's mad-scientist activities led her and Jenny to frequently clash as villain and hero.
Description
Physical appearance
Much like other versions of Laura, this version liked the colour purple and had big hair which often got in her eyes when she worked, (PROSE: The Winter Quests) red and curly, which she sometimes tied in a bun. She wore glasses and sometimes complemented her look with silver earrings, but, like other versions of Laura, often wore a mauve labcoat even in situations where this was incongruous. (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere and the Master of Monsters)
Personality
to be added
Powers & abilities
Laura had no particular powers of her own, though for a time she was able to regularly tap into the minds of 999 of her parallel selves via the Dimensional Consciousness Maximizer. (PROSE: Family Business) She was an inventor and engineer who had invented everything from dimensional technology like shift-guns (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere and the Master of Monsters) and the aforementioned D.C.M., to “the one-woman Lauracopter.”
Over the years she created a number of mechanical suits, including the large Mark I Draconic Exosuit (PROSE: Family Business), the formidable Mark II Draconic Exosuit (PROSE: Foundational Problems), and an unexpected Lord Thymon impersonation suit (PROSE: The Wedding of Jenny Everywhere).
Biography
Early life
Laura originated in the mid-20th century (PROSE: Family Business) in the city of New Flaversham, Wintlevania in the 38167th Universe. (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere Meets The Crew Of The Copper-Colored Cupids) She seemed to be a child of wealth, growing up in an admittedly-“mouldering” “Drake mansion” at 88 Curie Avenue. She was the same age as her best friend, Jenny Everton, and they were among one another's very few friends. (PROSE: Family Business)
Studying Jenny's powers
In 1973, Laura and Jenny, in their first year of college, developed romantic feelings for each other. Because of the interdimensional significance of the relationship between a Jenny Everywhere and a Laura Drake, their first kiss triggered an “interdimensional gizmo” Laura had been developing, the gizmotronic proton equalizer. Over the following months, Jenny started to get visions of her other lives and occasional “shifting fits”, but couldn't quite get a handle on her powers. (PROSE: Family Business) enny and Laura worked together on the development of the shift-guns, devices which could allow non-shifters to shift. Back in the day, the prototypes proved unreliable, as they couldn't figure out how to allow people to aim with them, making materialising in the void of space a major concern. (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere and the Master of Monsters) Eventually, Laura built the Dimensional Consciousness Maximizer, a device which gave its user a mental connection to 999 of their closest counerparts in the Multiverse. This allowed Jenny to connect once and for all to the telepathic network of all Jennies.
However, Laura then decided to use it for herself. She soon became addicted to borrowing knowledge from those 999 counterparts of hers, until Jenny grew concerned that the immoral worldview of some of the alternative Lauras she was communing with might be corrupting her. Since Laura wouldn't take her advice to be careful, Jenny got the idea to redirect her curiosity by suggesting that she try the machine on other people from their life, to see what they were like in other universes. The first people they persuaded to try it was Jenny's sister, not realising that she was fated to become their universe's Jenny Nowhere. In an instant, she was connected to “the miasma of all the Nowheres of all the worlds”, the power of Nowhere erasing her old identity, even physical records of her former name. As she felt it crowding in on her, Nowhere begged Jenny to switch off the machine, but, to her later regret, Jenny didn't comply, as she believed Nowhere was merely experiencing a momentary disorientation as Jenny had herself right before the “saw the Infinite” and became Jenny Everywhere once and for all. Subsequently, Nowhere became one of Jenny's nemeses. (PROSE: Family Business)
As Jenny's archenemy
Eventually, Laura became a successful businesswoman with her own (purple) skyscraper, at the cost of becoming more of a villain than Jenny Everywhere could countenance, and the two thus publicly became enemies, even though they still harboured feelings for each other and Jenny, unbothered by the contradiction, felt free to act upon them whenever the two weren't currently fighting. (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere and the Master of Monsters, PROSE: Family Business, The Winter Quests)
On one occasion, Laura contacted the Beastmaster, a revenant with a talent for making monsters obey his commands. She gave him an improved shift-gun capable of aiming, and told him to make trouble for Jenny, who was taking a relaxing walk in the Jungles of Hooloo in one universe. After befriending all three creatures that the Beastmaster tried to use against her, Jenny sent the third, a Sphinx, after him before destroying the improved shift-gun. She then returned to New Flaversham and confronted Laura in her office. However, as usual, she bore no real grudge and ended up inviting Laura round for ice-cream. Though still bemused at Jenny's lack of vindictiveness, Laura agreed. (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere and the Master of Monsters)
In December 2021, Prime Universe time, Jenny bought Laura a purple hairband as a Christmas present from Ms Amelia's, with CS-NA's help, briefly telling the small robot about her. (PROSE: The Winter Quests)
The Sophie Everytime plot
In June 2022, Prime Universe time, Laura completed the Mark I Draconic Exosuit, a huge dragon-like, lava-spitting mechanoid which she hoped to pilot, adopting the alias “Doctor Draconic”, enabling her to fight Jenny Everywhere anonymously without harming her public persona. However, as she moved herself and the Exosuit via a transport beam, the beam was intercepted by Jenny Nowhere and redirected to Nowhere Island in another universe. Nowhere altered the mechanoid's programming so that it would drive itself while using the trapped pilot's life-force as a battery, and then arranged for the “Lava Drake” to appear in the middle of a boiling lake to Jenny Everywhere, Lord Thymon and Jimmy Anytime as they made their way through the Island.
Rather than harming Laura, however, Jenny realised the truth, solving the Lava Drake “riddle” and freeing Laura, whom she introduced to Thymon, as well as to the existence of her and Thymon's time-shifted daughter Sophie Everytime, whom Nowhere had also kidnapped and whom they were here to rescue. Laura was intrigued by the idea of a relationship with Thymon, but Jenny turned it down, as well as any suggestion of Laura having input into Sophie's upbringing, fearing her friend's tendency to blur the lines between loved ones and test subjects. The group then continued their journey to the centre of the Island, finding one more party-member, Jenny Over-There, before they reached the Castle of Nowhere, where they were promptly taken prisoner by Nowhere, who went over her history with Laura and Jenny for Over-There and Thymon's benefit before explaining that this whole scheme was her grand revenge for what Laura and Jenny had done to her. Having adapted the Dimensional Consciousness Maximizer into a new device, she intended to turn Sophie into an incarnation of Jenny Nowhere by force. She then activated the machine, but it did not work as expected due to Sophie's self-confidence, bolstered by her parents' love throughout the day, far exceeding Nowhere's angst-ridden willpower. While Nowhere's mind took over Sophie's body, Sophie's own mind, instead of being erased, took possession of Nowhere's vacant one.
Breaking down crying due to the combination of her failure and of this new body's immature brain chemistry, Nowhere-in-Sophie's-body agreed to switch back after Sophie volunteered the knowledge her original name back to her (having, in her past but the relative future, been told by Jenny and Thymon, who remembered these events, to travel back in meta-time to find it out). She took off, gruffly admitting that Everywhere had “won this one”. Having realised that the whole of Nowhere Island emitted a shift-cancelling aura on its own due to being itself an incarnation of Nowhere, the group rowed out to sea from the Island to get out of the shift-cancelling era, and Jenny Everywhere then shifted everyone back home. (PROSE: Family Business)
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