Grey-tweed-coat-wearing Lady Aesculapius
One incarnation of Lady Aesculapius wore a grey tweed coat, and had several adventures, including figuring out who had murdered her previous body, negotiating with the Selachians on Hytheriax VII, and bringing down the villainous Letharchy.
Biography
Solving her own murder
After her previous incarnation was killed by a booby trap set by Professor Meistras, Aesculapius was reborn in a new body.
Revealing herself to Jason Jackson as he stood over her prior body, she decided to keep her survival a secret as part of a ploy to figure out who had killed her in the first place. She sent out invitations to her funeral to all of her friends and acquaintances, including Coloth, Auteur, Rita Andros, Jessica Zhane, Steve, and many more, and also ran an "intergalactic pan-dimensional obituary" to "make sure [her] death [was] the hottest of hot gossip". At the service, which was held in a chapel grown inside her Factory of Crystal, she wore an old Sherlock Holmes costume which had been bought by Graelyn Scythes during her travels with Aesc and left onboard the Factory, and used the thin alias of Aesc's "cousin", "Lady Raesculapius".
She read a short eulogy for herself and then invited the guests to the golden room next to the chapel, where she had set up a buffet. There, she and Jason mingled, and she suddenly had an idea and hurried back to the main control tower of the Factory, where she ran a DNA test on the parcel. The scan was not just inconclusive as she had first assumed, but was explicitly not a match for any individual Aesc had encountered before. Since the deed had obviously been the work of someone who knew her, she realised they must be a fellow Firmament in a new body, from which it was a logical step to blame Meistras.
Returning to the wake, she revealed her true identity, and throwing off the Sherlock cape to debut her new look, to a mostly unsurprised audience. She then exposed her reasoning to the crowd, and Graelyn and Arch stopped Meistras — currently in the body of "a woman with a ginger afro", wearing a purple dress — from making a hasty exit. Meistras admitted to the murder and explicitly warned Aesc away from investigating the Utopia Dimension again, warning her that it could mean her permanent death. She then escaped in her Factory of Crystal together with a mysterious child called Ofelia who appeared to be her charge. Returning to the buffet, Aesc, now settled into her new persona, looked fondly back on the life which had just ended, stating simply that "this was fun". Naturally, contrary to Meistras's intention, the day's events had further spurred her and Jason to investigate the Utopia Dimension. (PROSE: Life After Death [+]Loading...["Life After Death (short story)"])
On Hytheriax VII
Settling into her new body, Aesculapius travelled with her girlfriend Blanche Combine to Hytheriax VII to berate Chris Cwej for missing her funeral. There, she met Jhe Sang Mi, who had travelled there in a dream. She then negotiated with some Selachians, which Chris thought that she did very well. (PROSE: And Today, You [+]Loading...{"chaptname":"Yesterday I Saw a Deer","page":"27-29","chaptnum":"2","1":"And Today, You (novel)"})
Defeating the Letharcy
At the behest of the Firmament, she and Blanche travelled to the city of Takumi on a version of Mars in a universe known as the Warsong, to investigate some strange waves affecting people's dreams. To blend in there, she set up coffee shop Virginia's Cosmic Bakes, and was confronted once more with Chris Cwej and Sang Mi, as Cwej was there on a mission from his Superiors, investigating a contractor that they had hired, and Sang Mi lived there. Her and Chris decided to work together on the job, as otherwise they would have wasted a lot of time arguing. Then, both Aesc and Cwej realised that there was a signal coming from the waves, centred at the Takumi Broadcasting Centre. They tried to travel there as quickly as possible, but Sang Mi, whose friends had gone off without her, made them take her too. They then all rushed to the Broadcasting Centre. While there, they discovered that the signal was coming from another universe, from Grant Markham, who had been forgotten by all. They decided that they needed to make everybody remember Grant, to try and save him, and to do that they needed to make a television series about him. To do that, they rebooted the series Professor X. As they needed a script, they travelled to see Auteur, who eventually agreed to write it.
They stretched out time a little so that they could produce the entire thing in two weeks, and then produced it. Unfortunately, Auteur was double-crossing them, and transported them to the ship The Point of Know Return, where she was interrupted by the leader of the Letharcy, and organisation that removed people from time, and made everybody forget about them, including themselves, Whilom. He transported her into the body of a rabbit. (PROSE: And Today, You [+]Loading...["And Today, You (novel)"])
As Uisa
- Main article: Uisa
Herself again
After Cwej destroyed the Letharcy's memory containment room, she returned to her former self, free from the body of the rabbit. To give Grant another chance, she imitated the individual whom Chris and Grant had formerly travelled with, and took him on several adventures, claiming that she had never forgotten him, and sent him on his way, happy and fulfilled. She then mused on her relation to the mysterious individual with whom Chris and Grant had formerly travelled with, saying that she thought that she was her own person, at least on the inside. (PROSE: And Today, You [+]Loading...["And Today, You (novel)"])
Appearance
This incarnation of Aesculapius adopted a new "adventuring look" including black biker boots, checked trousers, a large belt, a "garish" floral shirt, and a grey tweed coat with a colourful enamel hedgehog pin on her lapel. (PROSE: Life After Death [+]Loading...["Life After Death (short story)"]) She was five foot eight, and her blood type was AB. (PROSE: And Today, You [+]Loading...["And Today, You (novel)"])
Personality
When she met Chris Cwej in Virginia's Cosmic Bakes, she childishly struck a pose, as teenagers Sang Mi and Sang Eun had done before her. Her favourite food was "chocolate cupcakes with salted caramel frosting and sprinkles", although this embarrassed her and she sometimes pretended that it was something else. (PROSE: And Today, You [+]Loading...["And Today, You (novel)"])
