A brilliant biologist and chemist, Alyssia Masters also lives up to her adventuring name, Fortress: she’s one of the toughest human beings on the planet. That is, for the five minutes after she injects herself with her special formula.

Alyssia Masters was always a shy girl and when her father died at a very young age due to a genetic disease, her mother was all she had. Her father had been the sole bread-winner and had struggled with that, so after he died they had no money and soon no place to live. For a short while they lived in their car until her mother could find a job and support them both.

Alyssia’s mother did the best she could, but because she dropped out of high school, she couldn’t get good jobs. Because of this Alyssia’s mother stressed education and college for her daughter. She wanted Alyssia to be able to support herself no matter what happened in her life.

School was hard for her, because she was made fun of for being short. Her nickname throughout school was Snow White. This was not an endearing nickname. She was bullied all throughout school and she started to isolate herself from others. Alyssia stuck to her studies and made straight A’s all through school. She graduated Valedictorian, but because of her fear of being bulled, she didn’t speak or even go to her graduation. They mailed her diploma to her house a few weeks later.

Because of her good grades she did get a scholarship to Yale School of Medicine. While there she decided to study genetics. Her first goal was to find out what her father died of and if she could help others. Sadly she never found out what killed him, his records were destroyed in a hospital fire several years after his death. But when her mother was diagnosed with osteoporosis and no known medicines were helping her, she found a focus for her talents.

She quickly received a doctorate in genetics and was immediately offered a job with Eli Lilly.

By the time she was starting her doctoral studies, she had spent hundreds of hours in the school’s research lab in her off-hours, working on a drug which could help her mother’s osteoporosis. She had developed one formula to the testing stage and at first it appeared to be exactly what she was looking for : the test rats’ bone density increased a hundred-fold, and so did the density of all of their tissue cells; they became fantastically strong and resilient. The problem was, the effect only lasted a few minutes. She took the drug home for more study. She didn’t want someone to know what it could do and try to use it for their own gains.

Then one night while studying the drug in her own house, she heard a commotion outside. Six thugs were loudly harrassing a young female just down the street. Her fear of bullies led to her shutting the curtains. She went back to studying, but then she heard the woman start to scream. She took a quick look at the drug and without a second thought she injected herself. She instantly felt strength surge through her body. When she thinks back on that night she thinks of it as the Popeye effect when he eats the spinach. She went outside and threw one guy halfway down the block and another into the side of a car. The others scattered when they saw what Alyssia had done to the first two. The woman was roughed up but okay.

Alyssia stood there looking at herself for a few minutes in disbelief at what she has done. Soon she started to feel the effects to wear off so she started back to her house. She noticed small foot prints impacted into the sidewalk, and she realized they were hers; her body had become so dense her weight had increased dramatically, enough for an angry stride to sink footprints into hardended concrete. It was at that moment she decided to help others with her gift.

This formula she kept a secret from everyone, telling the college it was a dead-end. She backed up and followed another promising lead which eventually paid off: a successful treatment for osteoporosis. Medical journals and Medical News deem it the best drug for seniors suffering from bone loss. Alyssia and Yale School of Medicine both make a lot of money off of this drug.

The first thing Alyssia did was buy a house for her mother.