Doll Maker's Diary, Part 8: Claire Hayes

Doll Maker's Diary, Part 8: Claire Hayes

Having elaborated on CRASH Alpha Team Leader Ellie Watts' backstory, powers, abilities and costumes, I will now move on to the current CRASH Commander, Claire Hayes. As the founder of CRASH, Mrs. Hayes has played an important role in the agency's history. Obviously, she deserves to have a Doll Maker's Diary entry dedicated to her, so here it is.

A brief description of CRASH Commander Claire Hayes.

CRASH Commander Claire Hayes was formerly an NSA officer, but soon expressed frustration at its inability to deal with the growing wave of superhuman incidents, and eventually left the NSA to found her own top-secret intelligence division for superhumans, which she named CRASH - the Covert Response Agency for SuperHumans. Much like her protege, Ellie Watts, Claire is a firearms expert and highly skilled in various forms of hand-to-hand combat. This made her a valuable asset during the first few years of CRASH's existence, when there were far fewer personnel employed in the agency, and budgets were much smaller. Over time, she helped CRASH grow into one of the world's largest covert intelligence groups, and undertook some of its most challenging missions. 

It was during one of these assignments that she rescued a hidden Himalayan tribe from annihilation by man-made avalanches, and as a reward, was allowed to learn their various secret psionic techniques. Eventually, she was promoted to CRASH Commander - the highest and most coveted rank within CRASH - and stepped down from field duty. She now handles mission briefings for her fellow CRASH field agents, ensuring that they are (usually) aware of the dangers they are about to face when they deploy.

Claire Hayes wore this outfit during her time as a field agent. It was not until later in her career that she gained the ability to establish internal and external psionic links. Even before then, her skills in battle were so formidable that she was able to successfully complete some missions entirely on her own. Thus, when she finally discovered her psionic abilities, she was even more of a force to be reckoned with than ever before.

Her knowledge of psionics allows her to distract her enemies by creating false targets near them, as well as assisting her allies by making them more aware of their surroundings. She can also establish an internal psionic link, enhancing her reflexes in the process. However, she cannot psionically link herself to anyone who is either too far away from her or is within a Psionic Inhibitor's area of effect. Given that Psionic Inhibitors negate her abilities completely, she often orders her agents to prioritize the destruction of these structures.

This costume is Claire's training outfit. She was one of the first CRASH personnel to realize that field agents must maintain peak physical condition at all times - a piece of advice she passed down to Ellie Watts. Her motto, "Willpower is everything", helps galvanize the agency into action when desperate situations arise.

Now that Claire has become CRASH Commander and stepped down from field duty, she handles the strategic part of the agency's operations. As such, she lets Ellie focus mainly on the tactical aspect of CRASH.

Thus ends a brief rundown of the CRASH Commander and her abilities. In the next post in this series, I shall take a look at another one of the members of CRASH's Alpha Squad, to which she belongs. And stay tuned - I also have plans for an upcoming storyline centered around CRASH.