Chapter 15: Agent Lyla Michaels
DCU!Lyla was only significant in the Crisis of Infinite Earths. Her character didn't have a role in the greater DCU besides that. Arrowverse!Lyla was a high-ranking ARGUS agent. I decided to use the Arrowverse!Lyla with significant back story.
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ORIGIN:
Lyla Michaels was born and raised in the Midwest. She desired adventure and left her parents to join the US Army. She excelled at combat arms. She advanced through the intelligence division in the US Army and worked closely with US Army Special Forces. While deployed to Afghanistan, Major Michaels became close with Sergeant Major John Diggle. They had a combat marriage that fell apart after they returned to the US.
To combat her depression from the loss of her marriage, Lyla was recruited by Director Amanda Waller for ARGUS. Her high intelligence, intelligence gathering training, and her combat skills made her an ideal ARGUS field agent. However, it didn't take long for Lyla to realize that Director Waller had no moral compass. She learned how to work within the ARGUS organization to help mediate some of Waller's more outrageous tactics.
It was during her time in Russia that Lyla came across intelligence that someone in the Russian government was selling people to a group called Shadowspire. She was intimately familiar with Shadowspire. She felt personally offended at this US Army based organization. When she presented the intelligence to Waller, the Director agreed to send her on an infiltration mission to put a stop to Shadowspire and made plans for Michaels to be air dropped with equipment to the island of Lian Yu to stop the rogue group of American criminals with SpecOps training. Lyla made sure to have adequate supplies and air dropped to Lian Yu.
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FAMILY:
Lyla has aged parents who live in the Midwest. She married and divorced John Diggle after an ill-advised combat marriage in Afghanistan. She has no children.
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MOTIVATION:
Lyla is motivated by a desire to serve. She had always wanted to be active and involved. She wanted to help people. Her parents raised her with solid moral beliefs. Her time in the US Army taught her how to navigate organizational bureaucracy to achieve the best outcome. Her morals were never black-and-white. Her work in intelligence taught her how to navigate the shades-of-gray.
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PERSONALITY:
Lyla has a strong personality. She has a very strong moral center, but she has learned that the world is fair or just. Not all intelligence can be measured equally. The source of the intelligence must be taken into account and verified. Her dealings with Director Waller have left a bad taste in her mouth, but she is not willing to work outside the confines of ARGUS to limit her damage. She respects the chain-of-command and believes that even Waller has to answer to someone.
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ABILITIES:
Martial Arts: Lyla is highly skilled at hand-to-hand combat and a master at several forms of martial arts.
Small Arms: Lyla is an expert marksman in multiple fire arms and skilled at targeting using flechettes, daggers, and other thrown projectiles.
Qualities: Intelligent, Tactical Ability, Strategic Ability, Skilled at navigating bureaucracy, multilingual (Russian, Chinese, French), Intelligence Gathering skill, deception skill, cooking,
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NOTES:
Arrowverse!Lyla was not as fleshed out as other Arrowverse characters. Because of this, she was inconsistent. She was used as a counter to Diggle rather than to give her a more detailed back story. She was also portrayed as more than willing to follow Diggle in all his questionable actions. I hated that.
Women are not patsies for their men as the Arrowverse portrayed them. The few female characters that they fleshed out, they destroyed. Felicity was toxic. Laurel was a doormat. Sara was the ultimate victim. Thea was the random character they used to develop their plot. I served with MANY women in the US military. I understand their thought processes better than civilian women. The fact that she worked with Special Forces in the US Army and then in Intelligence work for ARGUS clearly illustrates how she understood the gray. I can see her being more disgusted with Diggle's black-and-white stance. Not enamored by it. But Diggle is a separate rant.
In my AU, I fixed that. Lyla is a tough, military woman with strong ethics. I didn't use DCU!Lyla for several reasons. Mostly because the DCU didn't flesh her out at all. She only showed up in COIE. I don't plan on touching the COIE.
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