The Broderburgs

The Broderburgs are a character set in Petty Squabble.

Weapons/Abilities
RV, overpacked with a couple weeks camping supplies and food. Tom, a middle-management cubicle farmer for a yo-yo company in a past life, carries a hunting rifle and has the powers of vague awareness of Earth wilderness survival strategies, while also being the heart of the family. Clarice, reporter for a local newspaper, has a disposable camera and a pen-and-paper she carries around with her at all times; she is cleverer than one might give her credit for, and carries a commanding presence. Alison, thirteen, has a cameraphone (with a charger), is generally good with technology, and prone to spew out random helpful factoids which seem to make up her entire middle-school education. Ethan, eight, elects to carry around a Game Boy Color, an aluminum baseball bat, and a baseball cap (backwards); he is scrappy. Baby Emma has no possessions and no powers, yet.

Description
The RV is white and beige and somewhat banged up. Tom is tall and beefy, having gotten a headstart on his mid-life by beginning to work out obsessively in his early 30s. He sweats a lot and wears t-shirts that are not quite red. Clarice has long blond hair in scrunchies and has perpetually wide eyes that betray both stressed-out exasperation and constant awareness of her surroundings. She packed a lot of jeans and flannel shirts for the road trip. Alison, in her first of many acts of rebellion, has betrayed all the genes of her parents by having straight black hair, blue eyes, and a round face, but her personality is more reminiscent of her mother’s than she would admit. If she had yet learned how to dress sluttily, she would, but in her current adolescent period settles for a variety of black-and-red ostentatious thrift store numbers. Ethan has his mother’s hair, his father’s eyes, and his own denim jacket with a decal of his favorite cartoon heroes, the Archetypes, on the back. He is “scrappy;” Tom and Clarice easily could have gotten him on ADD meds but weren’t really comfortable with the idea, and he does well enough in school, if not as well as Alison. Baby Emma is a baby.

Biography
Tom and Clarice met at state college, married at 25 and 23 respectively, and had Alison a year later. Alison and Ethan were planned but Emma was an accident. Not being the youngest anymore, Ethan began acting out, so shortly after Emma’s first birthday Tom and Clarice agreed to fulfill one of the kid’s long-time wishes and take the whole family camping. This of course made Alison start to act out; it was a stressful and eventful few days as they drove the rusty old RV down to the campsite, and it only got worse once they were teleported across the multiverse to participate in a battle to the death with seven absurdly powerful and dangerous individuals.