Timeout
WIP
History
The meeting of Lawrence’s parents seemed all but inevitable. Indeed, across multiple timelines, alternate versions of his parents came together, fell in love and married. In one such timeline, the couple had a son, one born with the ability to control the very flow of time. As that child reached adulthood, his vast powers drove him insane and he destroyed that very timeline, moving beyond it into the multiverse beyond. There, that son grew in power, as other version of himself came into existence in other timelines, each seeming to add to the first’s power. Now known as Collapse, the son of Megan Howell and Robert Harrow continued destroying timelines, merging them together as he grew in power. Collapse also began seeking to have additional versions of himself born in more and more timelines, each adding to his already vast power.
On Earth Prime, Megan Howell gained superpowers in her early teens and became the superheroine Velocity, eventually joining the ranks of the Freedom League just as she finished high school. While studying for a year in college in England, Megan met Robert Harrow, a member of the British aristocracy, the two quickly beginning a relationship. However, due to Megan’s double life as Velocity, that relationship soon came to an end and Megan returned back to the United States to finish college.
However, due to the machinations of Collapse, by way of a powerful device called the Stopwatch that he had sent through time, Megan and Robert were soon brought back together to rekindle their relationship. But even as the two reconnected, a group of temporal refugees, survivors of the many timelines destroyed by Collapse, appeared to try to keep the pair apart and prevent the birth of another version of Collapse. Operating from a Null Time outside the timeline, this group was led by an older Robert Harrow who was the original Collapse’s father and had survived the destruction of their timeline.
After several encounters with this group, Megan and Robert eventually ended up in the Null Time when the older Robert Harrow began a project to create a version of Collapse from the DNA of Prime Megan and Robert and born in the Null Time. The hope was to create a version of Collapse that was disconnected from the other, and might someday be able to stop Collapse and end his destruction of timelines.
Thus was Lawrence born in the Null Time, with Prime Megan and Robert taking him as their son. From a very young age, Lawrence began demonstrating the ability to effect the flow of time. The new family spent the first six years of Lawrence’s life in the Null Time, outside the normal flow of time. The family then returned to Prime Earth, returning only a day after Megan and Robert had initially been taken to the Null Time. With Megan’s connections through the Freedom League and Robert’s status as an English lord, they were able to create a full identify for Lawrence as they settled into their new life.
Lawrence parents chose to make Freedom City their primary residence, allowing them to be close to Megan’s allies on the Freedom League and among other members of the superheroing community centered around the city. Attending the Nicholson School, Lawrence’s parents tried to allow him to live as normal a life as possible. But over the years, Lawrence has drawn the attention of numerous cosmic beings that appear aware of his possible connection to Collapse, and the possibility that Lawrence might be able to counter Collapse. This has led to a number of incidents over the years, including being transported to CoVic Station along with two Claremont teens that were babysitting him and a jaunt through time thanks to Quirk alongside his foster sister and her boyfriend from Claremont.
Now Lawrence has begun his time at Claremont Academy, to start to step out of the shadow of his mother’s legacy and move forward with whatever his destiny may be.
Timeline
2008:
July: Following her high school graduation, Megan Howell and two high school friends take a month-long trip through Europe over the Summer before they head off to college in the fall. The trip included a few days spent in Ibiza to celebrate Megan's eighteenth birthday. During that trip, Megan first met Robert Harrow, and they had what neither expected to be anything more than a memorable one-night stand. (Birthday Vignette: Velocity: Growing Up Fast)
2011/2012:
While attending Yale and pursuing an economics degree, Megan takes an extra year to study abroad at Cambridge. Early in her time there, she reconnects with Robert, who was finishing up an advanced degree and the two begin dating. By May 2012, the relationship had been going on nearly nine months (making it one of Megan's longest) and Megan was considering telling Robert about her secret Identity as Velocity when she is contacted by the Freedom League and asked to assist a team of UNISON super agents in recovering stolen plutonium in the Bulgarian port city of Varna. During a battle with members of the superpowered mercenary group Arsenal, Velocity and the UNISON case manager, Agent Salazar, are betrayed by UNISON super agents and Velocity is knocked unconscious. She and Agent Salazar manage to escape and go undercover to track down the rogue UNISON super agents trying to sell the plutonium in Marmaris, Turkey. While Velocity had another battle with the rogue UNISON super agents and members of Arsenal, Agent Salazar managed to secure the plutonium and the villains escaped. Just after she gets back to her apartment in England, Robert shows up, rather angry she had just disappeared without any word for three days. Physically and emotionally exhausted by the events of the last few days, Megan does not take the opportunity to revel that she is Velocity, and instead tries to tell a poorly thought out lie. Further angered by her attempt to lie, Robert breaks up with her. Heartbroken, Megna finishes the last few weeks of her time at Cambridge and returns back to Freedom City. (All Good Things.....(solo) [incomplete])
December 2012: Returning home to Freedom City after the fall semester at Yale, and before the start of her internship at Summit Transnational to finish her degree, Megan attends the Midnight Society's Holiday Party with her parents (as she has done in the past). While catching up with an old friend, Jennifer Owens (Silver Spider), Megan jokingly reminisced some about her relationship with Robert, although she still had not fully moved on from it, unlike so many pervious failed relationships before. (The Midnight Society Holiday Party)
December 2012/January 2013: Deciding on a whim to see in the New Year around the world, Velocity makes a stop in the Maldives, where she again finds herself reminiscing about her failed relationship with Robert and why she is having so much trouble moving past it. Pushing those thoughts aside, she soon gets back to her trip around the world. (Whirlwind New Years)
2013:
February: On the eve of the arrival of a business delegation from Summit Transnational to Stockholm, Sweden, Robert Harrow (now Lord Robert Harrow) arrives to meet with Baron Magnus Katastrof (secretly the hero Fenris) to get help with a mysterious Stopwatch that allowed Robert to control time. A couple days later (on Valentines Day), the delegation from Summit Transnational arrived, among them Megan Howell. During that visit, Megan is kidnaped by "Time Agents" that take her to a place outside of time, where she meets an older Robert Harrow from an alternate timeline where they married and had a son. This older Robert tells Megan about Collapse, their son that can destroy entire timelines and the threat of the Stopwatch in being designed to bring her back together with Robert so that another version of Collapse could be born in a new timeline, making the original stronger before he merges the timeline with his own, destroying it in the process. (Interlude: Out of Time) Returned to the timeline, Velocity seeks the aid of Baron Katastrof (and later Fenris) in attempting to get the Stopwatch away from Robert, who has fallen under the control Stopwatch and obsessed in getting Megan. After a chase across Europe that ended in Verbier, Switzerland, Velocity and Fenris managed to get the Stopwatch away from Robert and stop some Time Agents that arrived to try to take the Stopwatch. As Fenris left to transport the Stopwatch to the Freedom League, Robert confronted Megan, who he now knew was Velocity, and expressed his continued feelings for her. Uncertain whether or not Robert was still under the effects of the Stopwatch, Megan reluctantly rebuffed his request they renew their relationship (with no small amount of guilt with regard to the current guy she had recently been seeing in Freedom City as well) and left. (Stopwatch)
Late February: Still feeling very conflicted about Robert, the Stopwatch and Collapse, Megan seeks out some advice from her friend and teammate, Fluer de Joie. Traveling to Sanctuary, Megan tells Stesha the entire story of her relationship with Robert and the events from earlier in the month involving the Stopwatch. While concerned about the possible threat of Collapse, Stesha tells Megan to follow her heart and renew her relationship with Robert if that is what she truly wants. (Tea and Biscuits)
June: Following Stesha's advice, Megan and Robert renewed their relationship, although mostly a somewhat distant one, for while the distance was not the issue (given Megan's speed), but their busy schedules (which included Megan's internship and finishing her degree), when they were contacted by a somewhat infamous "archeologist" who had uncovered parts of a prototype Stopwatch. Reluctantly the pair became involved in hunting for the parts, and joined by Mechanodyname Hronos they tracked down the parts in Antartica and were able to recover them. (Stopwatch 2: Prototype)
October 25: As Megan and Robert's relationship continued to strengthen (and Robert became more and more removed from the influence of the Stopwatch), the pair purchased an estate together in Fiji and took a trip to visit it together. Shortly into their stay, a Time Agent appeared and kidnapped Robert. Panicked to get him back, Megan returned to Freedom City as Velocity and contacted Hronos to enlist his aid in trying to find Robert. At Hronos' suggestion, the pair contacted a mysterious individual Hronos had encountered, wielding a prototype Stopwatch, John Smith. Proving Smith with the actual Stopwatch, he was able to take the three to the Null Time, where the found the group run by the older Robert Harrow had taken both Megan and Robert's DNA and were using it to create a new version of Collapse who would be disconnected from the original, and possibly a means of countering him. While trying to process these developments, an aspect of Collapse arrived to destroy the Null Time and Velocity and Hronos barely managed to fend it off until the Null Time could again been sealed off from Collapse's reach. With the threat removed, the plan of creating a counter to Collapse continued, with Lawrence Harrow being born. Megan and Robert decide to stay in the Null Zone to raise him. (Stopwatch 3: Collapse [Incomplete]) After spending six years raising Lawrence in the Null Zone, Megan and Robert make the decision to return to the prime timeline with him, wanting him to have some chance at something like a normal life.
November 1: Returning just the day after Robert had been kidnapped, Megan and Robert reach out to Megan's contacts in the Freedom League to help them with creating an identity for Lawrence. One of the very first people Megan speaks with is Stesha, inviting her to the Wading Way apartment Megan had been living in since the start of the year. It was there Stesha met a six-year-old Lawrence for the first time. (They Grow Up So Fast)
2018:
February 14: With Megan and Robert wanting to get a chance to go out on Valentines' Day, Megan reached out to her old friend Callie Summers to see if there were any Claremont Students interesting in making some money babysitting. So Lexa Veen (Rev) and Zhu "Alexa" Xieng (SFX) when to the Harrow's North Bay estate to watch Lawrence for the night. Things were going well, when a pair of temporal shades that looked like Megan and Robert arrived to try to take Lawrence away. (Superpowered Babysitters Wanted)
While trying to get Lawrence away from the temporal shades of his parents, SFX, Rev and Lawrence found themselves transported to CoVic Station. Fleeing from more of the temporal shades, the arrival of several Praetorians caused the entity behind the kidnapping attempt to show itself, summoning temporal shades of the Deadly Dozen to try to capture Lawrence. SFX and Rev found themselves fighting alongside Paradigm, Galvanic, Seresk and Magnetar, while Lawrence did his best to avoid being captured or hit. After defeating the temporal shades and driving off the entity, the Praetorians contacted the Freedom League, and Megan (as Velocity) eventually arrived in a Pegasus Space Plane to retrieve the trio and return to Freedom City. (Far From Home)
2020:
January: Lawrence's foster sister, Lulu Beaumont (Crystal-Gazer) offered to watch Lawrence along with her then boyfriend Adam Lanchester (Specimen) when Megan and Robert had an event to attend. Little did they expect that Quirk would show up to play and take them all on a jaunt through time, as he broke things and they had to race to set them right again. (A Quirk In Time [Incomplete])
