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Evelyn Alice Noblezada




BASIC INFO


Name: I already told you.

Age: 17

Year: Junior

Gender: F

APPEARANCE:



Height: 5'6

Weight: Less than you. Keep trying.

Skin Color: Light brown.

Physical Description: What an injustice it is that Evelyn is one of the prettier girls in Leesburgh. Truly. Many a person has discussed, huddled around laptops at sleepovers or examining social media over clunky early-gen iPhones, how literally no one would care about Evelyn if she was not hot. Unfortunately God has seen fit to give his tightest fits to His shittiest soldiers.

Evelyn is about 5'6 and unlikely to get much taller, although one would be politely reminded Napoleon did not need to be in the 6' club to bring a continent to its knees. How merciful Evelyn has settled for but one city. She is thin (annoyingly) and has clear skin, said skin being the light brown of her mixed-race Hispanic/white heritage. She has dark brown eyes and eyelashes and brows that were presumably sculpted with one of those precision-lasers they use on diamonds. She has big, almond-shaped eyes and soft facial features that allow her to pass for a bit younger than she is, and she would describe as Disney Princess-esque, but, you know - hotter. She tends to stay moving, rarely standing still, shuffling her weight from one soccer-toned leg to the other, or chewing on bubblegum, or examining something on her phone (she has one of those glitter cases).

As far as the supernatural goes, I'll describe that in the power section.

Clothing: Fashion wise, Evelyn is always put together, even when she's wearing something casual to look laidback on social media, and coincidentally wearing sweatpants that cost more than most ensembles. While the town of Leesburgh Pennsylvania, I will wager, does not have a high amount of Met Gala viewers, Evelyn probably singlehandedly shifts the town's fashion consciousness a few levels higher. As her writer is not particularly adept at outfits, these will probably be left vague, but she's pulling off all the shit in the early 2010s that you were convinced you could never pull off. Rightfully. Look just assume it's all things fabulous.

Voice: Evelyn has a clear voice crisp as running water - did you know she sings? - and one with the slightest hint of an accent. Some have speculated this accent is carefully crafted to give her an exotic flair, as someone with a Hispanic accent should presumably pull higher than a C- in CP Spanish. These speculators, curiously, did not have prom dates that year.

PERSONALITY:


Character Traits: Evelyn watched Mean Girls with the understanding of Regina George that Hinckley had of Caufield. There is a lot to unpack with Evelyn. The most general approach would be to say she's a bitch, and that would not be incorrect. While she has no use or time for studying for classes (why do it when you could cheat?), she is far more cunning than the sweet smiles and giggles would let on. Her ability to piece together timelines and cross-examine alibis on Facebook would probably land her a position with a government intelligence agency if she actually wanted one. She is sharply observant, and moves like a shark covered in mirrors in a school of beta fish.

Evelyn tends to view most relationships as transactional. This is mostly borne from the fact that largely, that's how people view Evelyn. I'm not going to try to sell you on how she's a good person deep down, because a lot of people at 17 are just terrible and there's not really a hidden moral core underneath. She's nuanced, and layered, and complex, but none of those complexities involve a moral code that contextualizes her actions. Evelyn tends to view things based off the consequences rather than from any position of abstract moral reasoning. And tha'ts understandable - Evelyn's been dealing that way since she was little. Growing into your body, and an uncomfortably attractive one at that, in middle school, leads to early cynicism. Evelyn did not take the approach of shying away from strangers' gazes or trying to squash out her sexuality. Rather, Evelyn realized she could get free ice cream at 13 if she wore a low cut shirt. Beyond that, people approach her transactionally. She's Evelyn fucking Noblezada. You're not nice to her because you want to be nice to her. You're nice to her because you're afraid, or you want to get in her pants, or you want to get invited to her party because her parents have good liquor and don't give a shit. Evelyn has had so few genuine connections since stumbling through the crucible of puberty she tends to dismiss that sort of thing as something only children have, because that was the last time she had that sort of thing. Boys are all trying to fuck her, girls are all trying to fuck her over. Evelyn views herself as still being on top because she's sharper and smarter than the rest of them. And just better. There's an almost Manifest Destiny sense of how Evelyn views her high school. It's all there, boyfriends, prom queen status, lead in the musical, soccer captain - just hers for the taking. If someone else is currently holding those things, they should've not sucked so much and they could've kept them.

In that regard Evelyn's good features are really ambiguous, morally. She's observant and perceptive, but often in the way that she can seize on someone's insecurities at a casual glance. Evelyn can dissect a situation to figure out the best way through - and then choose an option that's just easier and faster. Evelyn has been around the block, socially, and is good at picking up on lies, telling how someone is shielding their ego with an offhand remark, joking to draw attention away from the fact their clothes don't match or they got caught with a boner in class or something. Her memory is not quite eidetic, but that's only because that word is fucking nerdy. She could not begin to tell you what the Krebs cycle consists of, but she knows good and damn well who was sitting on whose lap in 7th grade at Kyle Brennan's campfire. Evelyn is perfectly capable of showing kindness and magnanimity, if only because she understands the value of good PR.

This is not to imply that Evelyn is a complete monster or drowns puppies in her free time. She doesn't do cruel or mean shit just for the hell of it. She doesn't have a ton of qualms with being nasty to someone, and doesn't really see the problem with coming up with a solid rumor about someone if they're annoying her, but she doesn't go actively seeking evil. It's more that being shitty is way more fun. She's also really never had to come face to face with any sort of real world consequences for her actions. It's more like playing a game. Again, she's 17. You were also a piece of shit then, you just couldn't match outfits as well.

Bonds: Evelyn is highly competitive and likes being the best. She likes being in control, not necessarily in the sense of needing to be #1 at everything, but she wants the reputation of people knowing she could if she wanted to. Evelyn enjoys the game of it, so to speak. She likes figuring out what makes people tick and making sure that their internal clocks are running to her tempo.

Activities: Much like the girl who bullied you in high school, she annoyingly does it all. Musical theater? She was Christine last year, and applauded with roses that, again, viciously reprised-against conspirators have alleged she arranged to have bought for herself. She runs the Hispanic Student Alliance, which no one can actually manage to find a manifest of where they meet, who's in the club, or any activities they do, but she somehow has the first club listing in the yearbook every year with students most are sure do not actually live in Pennsylvania. She is on the soccer team, where even her harshest detractors have to admit grudgingly that she has some talent (this is kinda key to her character - she's partially annoying just because she is actually good at what she does, and carefully manages so no one sees her suck at stuff. You want to hate her, but she's able to give you the impression, like a good crypto enthusiast or a mid-tier cult leader, that you could also be that good if you just follow along). She has recently taken up gardening, which seems to be one of the few passions she pursues purely for her own sake and not for public perception. She is also an adept social media manager, and runs her Facebook (was Instagram around then) page with the sort of skills that will be highly marketable once she leaves college. She runs cross-country in the off-season, which she actually doesn't excel at, but everyone knows it's just training for soccer anyway.

She also went through a phase where she was helping train dogs to be therapy dogs, but no one's sure if she did that for the right reasons or because her dad's law firm had a huge scandal that month.

Skills: This bitch can make you cry in under ten seconds. A cursory glance is all Evelyn needs to size someone up. She picks up on the way you slouch, the way you scratch the back of your head when your nervous, how you lick your lips before you lie. She can remember someone wore the same outfit twice in one week and looks like they haven't gotten much sleep, she can tell you any detail you want to know about anyone in Leesburgh so long as it has no actual meaningful relevance to someone's intrinsic worth as a human being.

Beyond her observance, Evelyn is oddly a very good leader. She's more Stalin than Susan B. Anthony, but her junior varsity cult of personality shtick does work and she can rally a group and organize them fairly efficiently. Her very frank assessment of people helps her ascertain who will be best suited where, and how, which has earned her the actual rare affection of her soccer teammates.

She's physically fit but by no means a potent fighter. Evelyn is skilled at glamor and glim and anything you suspect Sharpay may have excelled at. If there's a metahuman press conference, Evelyn is the one to put at the microphone. She cries alligator tears, but her charms work on a great deal of people, in part because it's almost like a Kansas City Shuffle - you know she's a bitch, sure, and you don't trust her, but you totally miss why you shouldn't trust her, or that you're still hanging out with her and doing favors for her even as you say how annoying and full of herself she is.

Beyond her interpersonal social skills, Evelyn is good at social media and that whole shtick. She intuitively gets how to spin events, how to frame an issue, how to present oneself. Evelyn has a good knack for figuring out what her audience wants to see, and knows how to give it to them, all while convincing them they never stepped foot in the theater.

She also really is good at soccer and singing and theater which is so fucking infuriating to the theater techs, who have looked on the dark web for a hitman in response to her getting that Phantom role.

BACKSTORY


Backstory: Not all backstories need to be convoluted, and I fucking hate writing these anyway. It's one you've seen before. Came from money, and all the leisure to explore whatever she wanted, and the opportunities to ensure she'd at least have a chance to be good at it. Beyond that, Evelyn won the genetic lottery. There are kids you can tell from an early age are going to be losers, and kids that are going to be winners. Once you're out of high school, it doesn't matter so much. But until that diploma's in your hand, there is a caste system, and you're well aware of who kicked ass in their past life when it comes to Leesburgh.

Evelyn's metahuman status never particularly affected her, in part because it was just one more tool for the spin. Evelyn largely represents a metahuman who can still actually excel in "normal" society, and doesn't seemingly have much of an ability that gives her an unfair advantage, which makes her more palatable to hate groups than she otherwise may be. She's also human-passing. So this whole superhuman shtick really hasn't affected her too much, and Evelyn hasn't wasted time wondering why God did this to her or why it had to be her. She's got other shit to do.

Her family moved here in middle school, much to Evelyn's chagrin, from New York. Her father, being an attorney, was maybe involved in some drugs and/or wives that belonged to other people, and so a hurried exodus was made to Leesburgh. While most would consider this quite the downgrade, and in terms of raw social prestige it certainly was, Evelyn got her skills from somewhere - he quickly managed to turn a small-town, good-for-nothing firm into one that positioned themselves firmly as the legal liasions for metahuman issues, right at the heart of Leesburgh, and the success was immediate and resounding. While Manhattan may have the ivory towers, her dad has secured plenty of cash for them in his work (hustling both sides) and managed to make what was pretty clearly a career dead-end look like a brilliant humanitarian move.

Her mom mostly drinks wine, watches E!, and shops with Evelyn. Should this RP last long enough for the opioid crisis in America to reach its heights, she will 100% O.D. Evelyn's memorial post on Facebook will receive no less than 3,000 likes after the fact.

POWERS:


Description: The main reason Evelyn can get away with being pretty obviously a bitch is that her power is anything but. Evelyn is literally springtime. At first, her parents weren't entirely sure she had powers, but it became visible when they noticed that the grass was literally greener on the other side, provided Evelyn wasn't standing where you were. Evelyn's aura is reinvigorating and life-giving. This manifests in a number of ways.

Firstly, provided it's daytime, the sun is shinier, the air crisper, the birdsong clearer. Things are just better and more vivacious around her. Literally, her clothes look brighter and the colors richer than the people around her. Her aura gives people energy like a caffeine buzz, and there's almost a withdrawal to leaving her presence.

Evelyn's power affects the natural world. Animals are naturally quite friendly to her and it's not uncommon for butterflies to swirl around her head, a deer to casually come up and start nuzzling her arm when she's on the bench at soccer, so on and so forth. Plant life grows noticeably around her, and the health of everyone near her is improved. Evelyn's aura gives something of a healing factor. You will not regrow a lost limb standing next to her, but your odds of surviving a gunshot are remarkably higher, although your chances of suffering a self-inflicted gunshot wound will skyrocket. She can't induce Wolverine level healing, but you could recover from nearly anything a lot faster if you were near her for the duration of your recovery.

Being in Evelyn's immediate presence, the springtime energy is pretty potent. People are more inclined to like her, and life blossoms. People's emotions are heightened, the air is warmer, sensory experiences more vivid and potent. Evelyn can only alter all this to a degree. She can really turn up the charm if she wants to, or if she's trying to keep a baby bird alive or something, it's a lot easier, but she can't turn it off or turn it up all the way. While Evelyn is fully accustomed to this, other people often aren't. Part of the reason Evelyn always seems to have the social edge is that when she interacts with people, they basically become high for the first time and don't realize what's happening. A lot of guys just think that the butterflies in their stomach around her are why she's literally the only girl in the world for them, because biologically no one else has that effect (as I said, teenagers dumb).

Evelyn's singing is not supernatural in the sense of a true Disney Princess, but it is dazzling. You aren't going to lose your free will or anything hearing it, but animals are drawn nearby and charmed, and you're at least going to feel some kind of admiration or rush of emotion. It's not going to stop you from pulling out a gun and shooting her in the head, but you may need a good cry after, if nothing else.

Now for the part every RP needs - combat applications. Evelyn is really not a brawler, or a heavy hitter. Surprise. You certainly want her on your side, because you're going to feel more jazzed and your wounds are going to not be as harsh. Her energizing effect is quite handy, and can keep people going longer than they otherwise would be able to. For direct combat, Evelyn's limited. Her ability to juice up sunlight and springtime means that she can bring on a real harsh glare if she has to, and with some serious effort and training she may be able to surround herself in a sunny glow that could burn people. But that's a ways away, because Evelyn has really pooled all her resources into figuring out the social gimmicks of her powers and never bothered with anything else.

As mentioned, animals fucking adore Evelyn, and will not attack her unless really provoked. They're very friendly, and will often help her out if needed. She can't summon a grizzly bear out of nowhere, but if you wanted to fight Evelyn, a nature preserve or petting zoo would be a pretty terrible place. Similarly, plant life flourishes and blossoms around her. Plants will literally go into bloom as she walks past, then wither back into their wintry gloom after. If she stays in an area long enough, and were to concentrate, two things you probably just can't convince her to do, she could potentially grow a lot of brush, thorny vines, so on and so forth. Obviously plants don't have the intelligence to fight someone as a dog or cat might on her behalf, but you may notice tripping over more roots or getting slapped by more branches if you annoy Evelyn in the woods.

Finally, her springtime aura lessens the effects of toxins, poisons, etc. She's a breath of fresh air. Being around her will really weaken the effects of knock-out gas or a snakebite, although obviously not 100%, and the minute you're outside her aura the effects will leave you very sharply (along with a dopamine crash). She's not able to lay on hands and cure someone's cancer, but she's kind of that unknown factor that makes a team operate far beyond the sum of their parts when she's around, and no one can really put a finger on why.

Evelyn has a much higher ceiling for her abilities should she actually work on increasing her strength. She will eventually be capable of a larger aura, more intense effects, and more direct control and finesse over what she affects. Eventually, while she will never reach the level of pure telekinesis over plants or something like that, her abilities there will grow, and she'll have better uses for and management of sunshine and springtime.

Limitations: Namely Evelyn doesn't give a shit about being a superhero. To the nerdy casual observer, the applications of her powers are pretty fucking mind-blowing. She could easily make millions just standing in an endangered wetlands. Evelyn, however, thinks marshes smell like ass. So while she's really mastered the social glow part of her power, she hasn't put a lot of time or effort into the more fantastical elements, which I imagine will need to occur in this RP.

Additionally, Evelyn's power takes a LOT of energy to be more than subtle boosts. The aforementioned solar flare/sharp glare type of thing would leave her at about 30% of her stamina to do once, and it's really going to make someone drop an f bomb and rub at their eyes for a minute. Surprisingly for the varsity soccer MVP, she doesn't have a ton of supernatural juice to keep going, due again to the lack of practice. So with training, these limitations could lift.

For the more concrete ones. Evelyn's power is largely dependent upon her surroundings. She can boost the vigor and health of people - if she's near them. She can make plant life grow and animals go full Disney - if she's in the woods. If you put Evelyn in a concrete room by herself, there's really jack shit she can do.

Evelyn's power resist natural forces; that is, in the dead of winter, the air will still be noticeably warmer around Evelyn, and on an overcast day the sun may shine a bit brighter through the clouds if she's around, but she can't turn a blizzard into Miami Beach. Anything resembling a combat application, which is not her forte, doesn't manifest inside or away from nature, which Evelyn doesn't really like anyway because dirt sucks.

She can adjust her aura somewhat. So if she's in a fight with thirty people around her, and only ten are her friends (well, you know), she can concentrate real hard and make it so that they're getting the bulk of her power, but the rest are still getting a trickle. Perhaps the best way to put it is that Evelyn currently lacks the metaphysical muscle or finesse to turn the throttle fully one way or the other. She can amp up elements of her abilities, or muffle them, but she's not yet skilled enough to fully reduce either and this causes problems for her occasionally (ex. everyone feels jittery at a funeral).

Obviously, her singing is neutralized if you wear earmuffs or find a way to shut her up, which no one ever has.

Weaknesses: Evelyn's powers are subtle enough that there isn't really one Kryptonite bullet to take her out. So I'll list a few.

Firstly, her dizzying effect on people, the emotional rush, the energetic boost - these effects are tangible, but largely only disorienting on the unprepared. The same way that when you've been drunk a few times, you can manage to be more coherent than the first time you got shitfaced, if you're aware of Evelyn's powers, it's not going to make you turn into an idiot (it really wouldn't already - you just feel your heart on your sleeve, the colors are brighter, the air sweeter, etc). So someone with willpower or really a Valium can muscle past that. As far as a direct weakness, it also relies on Evelyn's emotional state, which is generally nonplussed. If you piss her off or upset her - first off, your ass better leave town, because she will fucking ruin every relationship you have - the cheeriness is melting away.

Her healing factor does not stop bullets, as said before. If you get hit by a hand grenade you are still fucked. If you break your leg on a hike around her, you may find it can support more weight than maybe biomechanically it should be able to. However, her power offers soft resistance her. You can brute force past it. A shallow bite by a snake you may be able to resist near her; if a king cobra sinks its fangs in deep, she can really only buy you a few minutes more.

Her singing requires you to be able to hear her, and again, it may make you drowsy or feel giddy, but if you're in a pissed off mood it's probably just going to piss you off more.

Her outdoor powers require outdoors. Harsh winter conditions really limit her. It doesn't neutralize her, but it basically leaves her walking uphill constantly. If you walk into a walk-in freezer with Evelyn, she's still going to be warm and summertime, but it's requiring a lot more energy to resist those external forces. So if your plan to survive a hike in the Arctic is to keep her along, she'll need a lot of rest and coffee.

Her aura is also limited in range and dissipates when she leaves. If she spends a long time somewhere, the effects take longer (ex. the plants outside her house look like the Garden of Eden because she spends 10 hours a day there and keeps coming back) but she can't turn a salted field into a vineyard unless she's there for a year straight. The most succinct way to put it is that Evelyn's power nudges entropy one way or the other, but she can't reverse it or change its course completely. You're trying to grow plants? They'll grow better. But she can't make something from nothing. Likewise, if you're savvy to her charm, it's not really going to work on you as well (on a purely metaphysical level - she still is very socially savvy, and can weasel her way through situations on good old-fashioned charisma).

The longer she goes without sunlight, the weaker she becomes.

Any other suggestions welcome, I can't think of any others off the top of my head. I'll tinker with this more.


Other Information: Some of the most well-kept secrets in history include the true reasons behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the events that transpired at Skinwalker Ranch, and rumors of a horrifically embarrassing event Evelyn caused in elementary school. Evelyn stomps those rumors out like the fucking NKVD.
The Mother of Bones


She smirked. You would ask us to leave our weapons here as we meet the air queen. Tell me, child, how do you plan to make the Son of Stone safe for the company of your queen?

Still, the Dust Mother offered no quarrel. She did, however, clutch to her walking stick. She would not go hobbling before a monarch, however foolish this one may be. Token courtesies cost little and earned much. The Dust Mother had few weapons on her - a small dagger for carving and a pouch of harmful mixtures at best. She was protected by more than steel.

The scarab approached her. From behind the skull helm that covered the Dust Mother's face, she could feel the apprehension and disdain of the others. The scorn of the soft-skinned ones was of little concern to her. Without ten times my numbers, they do not have the courage to act on their anger. She eyed the small creature, armored in its carapace. She did not like it. Its features were foreign, but it seemed excitable. Seldom were people excited to Kaimerians. This merited no small amount of suspicion - and its honeyed tongue may have tasted sweet to the children around her, but it smelled of snake oil to her. "Well met, Child of Chitin," the Dust Mother spoke, her tone terse. She did not mind pleasantries, but now hardly seemed the time - and she doubted the creature asked if she had companions so it could properly prepare a feast. "I am never alone," she responded, thinking perhaps that would make whatever alien mind worked behind its outer-skull think for a few moments.

The Dust Mother turned to the emissary. "The terms are fair," she spoke, her voice raspy as the desert air, "But I will keep my walking stick."

Then the mouth of the air queen was struck down, and the Dust Mother tasted salt and iron on the desert breeze. Sworsd were drawn and battle was upon them. For a brief moment, the Dust Mother contemplated if this was treachery: but it hardly seemed likely. No, this soft-skinned queen was good to her word. She merely hired fools for watchmen.

The Son of Stone turned and spoke to the raiders with the voice of a mountain, calling for peace. This intrigued the Dust Mother, even as her heart began to thunder in her brittle chest. An idealist or a fool, she mused. Time will show if diamonds or dust are behind his skull. The Dust Mother gripped her walking stick tightly with one hand, reaching into a pouch upon her back with the other. From behind the skull she wore, the glare of the desert sun was lessened, and the whipping winds had a difficult time casting sand into her eyes. Though her peripheral vision was limited, what her aged eyes could see was clearer. A fair trade, in her experience. The moving mountain crushed the raiders who came before him, and the Dust Mother stepped back slowly, the clinking and clattering of her bones unheard in the screams and shouts of battle.

The small girl who bared her stomach attempted to burrow for safety from the storm. The Dust Mother had not sprung to movement or attempted to run - she stood still and ready, her old muscles primed for when she needed them. At her age, she could not spare the fancy flourishes or reckless strikes of the children. There was an economy to the Dust Mother's movements - slow and steady, she kept her breathing regular and as much of her energy as she could spare. There was little chance that she had the strength or energy for a prolonged exchange with even the least of these raiders.

Fortunately, she was likely the least imposing of the group, and the bones she wore offered her a passable-at-a-glance camouflage to their attackers. She stepped backwards as the brawl expanded, taking in the scene. The winds grew stronger, and a desert storm was soon upon them. The small girl had noticed this, wrapping her head with a shawl.

Outside, the beasts screamed for aid. Your time has come, The Dust Mother thought with irritation, even amidst the clamor. Face it with honor and your bones may yet be worn by a warrior. She stepped over to one of the other rods supporting the tent, some feet from the small girl attempting to hide herself in the storm.

Ah.

She turned her head straight up to the desert sun, the milky whites of her eyes stinging in pain for a moment. The Dust Mother watched the currents of the wind, and a crooked grin spread across her face from under the helmet of her skull. The storm came from behind them, roaring toward the attackers. She hobbled another few steps to the iron rod that bound the heavy tent to the earth.

"Child," she spoke to the bare-bellied girl. This may yet show if she will bear warriors or wretches. "Cut through the cord."

She offered no explanation for her plan - an elder Kaimerian mother was not used to affording such luxuries to ones as unbloodied as her. Knees popping, she knelt and drew the carving knife at her belt and began sawing through the thick, heavy rope beside her, feeling the tent grow less anchored with each pull.
Time and again had the Dust Mother passed through the Sea of Bones. Her eyes past two dozen paces saw the sand more as a blur of mirage and dirt. She did not need her eyes to see far enough to the far dunes; she could see farther still.

"We do not travel tomorrow." she said. It was all she had spoken that day. The group of caravaneers she walked with held her in little regard. While proud, she was no one's fool. She had not expected the prestige afforded to her by a Kaimerian clan that may have crossed her paths. The gentle ones took her for a senile grandmother; they were incorrect on both accounts.

They take me for a piteous creature, she thought, seeing the faces of the humans and the fair one soften as they witnessed her. She moved slowly through the desert, true, but she did not stumble. Neither did the weight of her wares make her sink into the sand. The sun rose and the Dust Mother rested. In the cool light of dusk and dawn she traveled. No more and no less. Yet thrice or more a day, she seemed to walk past an oxen ankle-deep in the dust as its master tried to pry it free from the loose dirt of the dunes.

The last time she had spoken, she had worn out her welcome. The gentle ones were not like her people. Their flesh was as soft as their skulls. Three oxen fell in the first fortnight, and two more in the second. Their pace slowed with each beast they carved apart for spare meat and left at the wayside. More bones to the sea. The gentle ones offered to carry her belongings, but her belongings were few, and the Dust Mother was not coddled. I was carried before my legs had strength to stand, and you shall carry me when that strength leaves them. Over each beast that fell, she drew up a handful of magenta powder from one of the pouches that hung from her neck and sprinkled it over the corpse, murmuring words in a tongue foreign to the gentle ones. The beasts were loyal. They deserved no burial, but they had done their duty. In turn, someone would say the words when she fell. The Dust Mother had faith enough that wherever this parchment of the gentle ones took her, it would not be so far from her home that none at her graveside would know the words the gods had taught them. She would not buried in her homeland, but she would be buried, and she would be buried well. That solace, at least, she had to believe the gods would grant her.

When the last oxen fell there was fighting between the gentle ones. The Dust Mother sat silent. The sun had boiled their blood and the blood had boiled their minds. One slew another with a sword and was cut in two just as quickly. She sat, walking stick lain across her lap. She held no pretenses about her fate should she come to blows with any of them, least of all the fair one, but a daughter of Kaimeria did not pass into the earth without blood to mark the way. Should any raise their hands against her, she would lame them with a strike as their swords hit their mark. She may need three legs to pass through the dunes, but none alive could make it with one.

As the fair ones screamed over provisions and providence she stared at a lump in the sand. Curious. She stood and walked over to it, brushing the dirt aside. A half-buried donkey. The bones were not a rarity. The kindness was. Other strangers walk this land, she mused. Perhaps it was a loyal beast as well. She dusted its corpse and spoke the words, then left it for the crows.

They slept that night, but uneasily. Weakness. The Dust Mother told them as much, and was told in turn to silence herself before she was silenced. So the pretenses to respect for one's elders had passed. So be it. The desert had burned the honor out of better men than these goldmongers.

It was three days later she told them. "We do not travel tomorrow."

They spoke back, a flurry of fair and gentle words. There was still a chance the horses could pull enough provisions to salvage the caravan. They were running low on water as it was, and further delays would mean doom. They needed to keep going - for fear of the sun or a knife to the throat, the Dust Mother could not deduce from their tone. At this distance their faces blurred into one another. She had not bothered to learn their names. Were their names important, she would read them etched into their bones when they fell to the wayside. She spoke again. "We do not travel tomorrow."

At this they broke away, cursing. They made camp for the night, sharing the sparse jerky they had left. The meat was far too foul and tough for the Dust Mother's teeth, which was all as well for her. The blood soup she'd made from the fallen oxen had not been appetizing enough even for the starving gentle ones. So be it. The stomachs and steel alike of the gentle ones were not as strong as in Kaimeria. She drank in silence. The next morning came and the Dust Mother had already risen. She had been at work since the Latecomer Star was aglow in the east, digging a hole into the desert dirt. The first few stabs into the earth were difficult, the soil burned almost as stone. After that they came more easily.

The fair one shook his head. "You are mad."

"The bones speak. We do not travel today." she said back, simply.

She dug. They packed their things and left her in the sun. The woman did not have the strength to dig deeply. They may have had the strength to dig enough for all of them, had they lain closely and cast their tarps well. There would have been no time nor energy for the horses. The horses were dead the moment they breathed the dust of the Bone Sea.

The Dust Mother laid her blankets over her and laid down in the shallow grave, resting her eyes as the desert sun rose high in the sky, then darkened, then went out completely. It was two hours after dawn, and the sandstorm raged two hours more. When the winds died down she rose slowly, shaking the dirt from her tarp. She went onwards.

She did not sprinkle the twilight dust on the bodies of the caravaneers. They had not died with honor. She spared a touch for the horses, who had served their duty, even to fools, and pressed on.

The inclines grew sharper, and for a moment the Dust Mother let herself doubt. Perhaps it was her time. Then the moment passed, like a cloud across the desert sun, and she was steady once more. What strength was left to her was enough. Exusia. Exusia. It was a soft land, she was sure, but a soft land was better than none, and children nursed on sweetwater could be made to stand the taste of iron. Seventeen sons and a daughter had she born on the surface of Deadwood; seventeen sons and a daughter had she lain beneath its dust. It had been long ago since her womb quickened, before the last war, and before the one before it. She would bear no more children. But she may yet make a home for some. There was that. There was that.

The Dust Mother reached the encampment ten days after the caravaneers drowned in living sand. The guards did not raise their weapons as they had to the others. Even in a land of witches, ones like the Dust Mother did not draw immediate suspicion. She raised a crooked hand to her hood and drew it back, eyeing the two. Hmph. Gentle ones. There was no courage to be had in numbers, and she had found precious few of their kind who had true iron in them. "I come to seek foreign lands," she spoke, drawing forth the paper from her parcel. She could not read the text, but knew the honor of the one that had given it to her. The guards exchanged a look and let her pass, hobbling along with her stick, the dirt of the Bone Sea thick upon her clothes.

Hmph. A bastard's collection lay before her. A son of stone stood taller than the rest, a mountain made to walk and breathe. Strength of oxen in that one, but strength of iron? This was yet unknown. A man had brought his beast in with him, a horse well-groomed. A fair one. Perhaps he knew of loyalty, then, or the least of duty, insomuch as his kind did. The others had left their beasts to graze. Perhaps this was a waking beast. The Dust Mother could've told once, but her eyes had dimmed in her decades. It was no matter. A small husk stood before her, armored in its own skin. She had seen some of their kind before, she remembered. Her third-born had quarreled with them once. She gave him a terse nod and no words further. A laughing man, but he was not dressed in motley. There was something beneath it, yes, something like iron, but perhaps not quite. A godly man, she could tell, though she doubted the power that rested in the altars of the gentle ones. A harrowed man sang to himself, a blade at his belt finer than any of the piecemeal armor he wore. The Dust Mother scowled. It was a fool of a child who kept a toy in better shape than his waterskins, though she could see he was bloodied at a glance. The gentle ones were full of fool's confidence. A girl sat alone with an artificer's arms to her. She had the trinkets of false gods about her neck, and a weapon of false strength across her lap. Another girl sat alone but apart from the other. Her stomach was bare, but even the Dust Mother's dimming eyes spotted no scars about them. Her hips were too thin and her posture too sure. This one was no mother, yet garbed as one. The fashion of the gentle ones perplexed her on the best of days and irritated her all the rest. If you have no scars to bare to the desert sun, cover your flesh. Seventeen-and-one cuts across my stomach, and not a one on yours. Still something in the two girls had some semblance of strength, even if the Dust Mother detected a distinct lack of smack-marks to the tops of their skulls. Two stared at the parchment on the table, as if the writings of men too green to leave their porcelain towers was worth a moment's time. A suckling boy gabbered at them. If she opens her bed to you, runt, then it will be tough to say which of the two of you is more piteous. The last looked to be the scion of goliaths - good, strong folk, if no Kaimerians - and the sole one the Dust Mother seemed to feel an initial flicker of respect for. She sat quietly. Battle-bloodied. Before the Dust Mother spied the mark across her back, she had an inkling of the girl's history. The Dust Mother had seen slavers, killers, lovers, singers, poets, dancers, spies, and crooks. They walked differently, held themselves apart. This one carried the weight of too many. It is not the weight of the spear that bends her back so young, The Dust Mother mused. This one carries the iron that should run in her blood.

The Dust Mother had rarely been in the company of so many gentle ones, and even more rarely enjoyed said company. "Pardons if I am late," she spoke in their tongue, a touch out of practice if serviceable. "The others were lost at sea."

The apology was a formality she doubted the little ones still held to. Guest right was important, even if not to the "gentle" ones. She could hardly expect herself to be called late either, given that it seemed most of the lot had been born a few hours before she found the tent.

The old woman's tone was curt but firm. Late she may have been, but these unbloodied ones seemed to be wasting the luxury of time the Dust Mother had not possessed for a decade, perhaps more. She sat near the front, leaning on her stick, the necklace of bones clattering quietly as she rested.

The children needed to hush. There was work to be done.
ugh YAS fight over me kings
Still tryna see if I vibe, this week has been so shit all my brainpower is reserved for not eating my own hands at work
Vaguely toying with the notion of a Kaimerian grandmother
Lynn


Blend in. Lynn visibly scowled at the suggestion, but turned away for a moment from the group, arms crossed and teeth clenched. After a few moments, slowly, the intense heat boiling off her seemed to simmer down, and her hair flickered from white-hot to a mere blue. When she turned back, her skin still shimmered as though live coals were lurking just under the surface, but she was no longer causing the papers on the desk around her to spontaneously ignite.

"Fine." Lynn said. "I'll do my best Hitler impression, we should be able to walk right through. Lynn's hands were still clenched into fists, and wisps of smoke coiled off her. As everyone put on the lab coats, she watched Archie for a moment, his hands fumbling, as though they'd lost a touch of human dexterity, a look of subtler panic undercutting the more apparent terror on his face. For one moment, a thought clinked in her mind like ice in a whiskey glass, and she thought of egging him on, of pushing the lizard out and pointing him through the open door. There is nothing in this place we couldn't smash and burn, Lynn thought. Spoons could throw him through the side of the station and to the motherfucking moon.

But then Lynn blinked. That was - that wasn't what she should - no. No. Cursing under her breath, Lynn walked over and parsed through the lab coats, the smallest one being a men's medium. "Fuck me," she muttered, putting the coat on. It fit her roughly the same as a bridal gown, and Lynn attempted to roll up the sleeves with as much fury as she could manage, cursing under her breath. For just a moment as the others prepared, she let herself stare around the room, soaking in every single detail. The glow of the fluorescent lights, the way the remains were sludged across the inside of the tubes, the smell of cleaning solution on the tile floors. She turned and walked, doing her best not to let herself get tripped on the lab coat. Lynn walked beside Archie and behind Denim, who offered directions in short, terse words. Lynn could see it on her face, and on Denzel's too. They were starting to look like her - without the fire, and without the glow, but Lynn could see it. Spoons was already there. A part of her, the part of her that could feel the vibrations of slamming Salamandra's skull into the wall running up her arms at night when she couldn't sleep - a part of her wanted to fight that, to tell them not to.

But the other part of Lynn, the part that had only ever found one book she was ever assigned worth reading, purely on the basis of its first line, felt otherwise; it was a pleasure to burn. "Let's see how these fuckin' Nazis do when I put em in the ovens," Lynn muttered under her breath. In the center of the group, her eyes darted in every direction. She may have lacked Keaton's preternatural thinking, or the sharp senses Archie possessed, or whatever weird antenna shit Leotard was doing, but Lynn had a more mundane set of senses. She had eaten a number of meals in parahuman juvy with a spoon angled to watch behind her as she she wolfed down meals. She had known to look for the bulges of pistols that gave away plainclothes cops, the subtle tells of violence on drug dealers or inmates or any number of purely human predators.

Leotard was doing the same thing beside her, Lynn could tell, and for a brief moment Lynn wondered what his upbringing was. No man who wore a leotard was in a gang, so she ruled out any form of criminal activity wholesale. It was a question worth asking before they'd walked into death row, but Lynn let it pass from her mind. The anger was still there, throbbing, but she kept in check. A little longer, she thought, watching killers and rapists and torturers pass her by. She felt in her empty hands the rough texture of the bunny rabbit doll from the woods, the single button eye, the tag with an inmate's number. If her blood boiled any hotter, it may well have turned to steam.

"I - " Lynn turned, seeing that Archie had grabbed onto Spoons' arm. Lynn's emotions had never been blessed with stability, and for a split second she felt all of them at once. His presence next to hers, warm in a way she couldn't be, in a hospital bed - fury, like when he'd brought her to the mall and had a fucking cop there - small, the dragging of her lab coats and the looseness of her sleeves on her stupid, small, thin body - anger for letting her mind wander a minute when there were children dying around them, for being stupid, for even -

Then they were in an elevator and he had let go. He stood next to her, putting her in the corner, where her back was safe, masking her flickering hair with his frame. They were close, enough to feel every muscle pulled tense and tight in his back with anxiety, the smell of dirt - the real kind, not the tons of transplanted soil that made the artificial gardens of the Promise - and something like the salt of the sea, Lynn thought. Thoughts came to her as they had non-stop since Lynn realized she was going to die, really die - in this place. It wasn't that Lynn hadn't made peace with dying, that killing the people who killed children (just like you, burning boys alive) wasn't as good a way to go as any. She'd known that, she understood it, but little things kept coming to her mind unbidden and shaking that surety. Like the ocean. She - what was it like to ride on a boat, she wondered, snug for a moment behind Archie. For a moment, something warm - soft warm, like Christmas candles, or a cookie out the oven that was still goopy - seemed to melt through her arms and she realized she'd started to lift them, to wrap around him for just a moment in the -

The alarm blared and her arms clenched back. Psychiatric patient loose? Of course. Lynn really wasn't disturbed by this information, and was a bit surprised to see the others were. More chaos only helped them. Sure, they may have been homicidal like - like Salamandra was - she was going to hurt him but they had to kill a lot of Promise fucks before they got to anyone who didn't deserve to die. Lynn was okay rolling those dice.

"Oh shit Spoons, they found out you left your room," she muttered under her breath as the gen ones in lab coats - close enough for Lynn to grab, wrestle to the ground, and spark out - funneled out. As they ran, Lynn fumbled behind for a moment, bundling her trailing coat up in one hand as she hustled to catch up. Stupid legs, Lynn wanted to shout. I fucking hate being short.

They reached a door which needed a keycard - hey, Packet, yet another fuck-up from the guy who probably stuck it in a toaster and called out Cara's name. Before Lynn could advocate for just having Spoons punch through the whole door, Leotard started analyzing it.

"Well," Lynn said, her voice as dry as she could muster. "When it comes to only going two inches deep, I trust this guy entirely." Why does this dude know so much about doors? His three passions are doors, homemade explosions, and gymnastics, and we don't think he's a fucking narc? Again, Lynn found herself less than trusting of Leotard's motives. He seems to have quite the knowledge of the Spire's security systems. Lynn started to speak again but noticed Archie, tense. She frowned. Lynn was sure she could put some heat on the door and, while melting through it entirely would be quite the expenditure of energy and time, she was sure she could soften it up a bit as long as Spoons didn't mind her hands getting medium-rare in the process.

But Archie looked tense.

Lynn hesitated, looking between the door and Archie. Why do I always have to fucking choose

"Uh, Eli," Lynn said quietly as Leotard drew stuff on the door, because now he did arts and crafts and gymnastics. Why does no one else think this guy is fucking us over? "Could you, um, - " she nodded her head toward Archie, feeling the fire in her gut twist into iron snakes. Then she turned her back on him and went over to the door. A bunny rabbit doll or the feeling of someone beside her in a hospital bed. Lynn pushed all that out her head, someone's mocking voice - whether Salamandra's or Che's, she couldn't tell, and pressed up against the door. Lynn took several deep breaths, her skin and hair shimmering rhythmically like a bellows blasting air into a burning forge. The air around her began to warm up considerably. She pressed her hand against the door. While Lynn had never stayed awake in a science class (assuming she attended in the first place) to understand the minute applications of her powers, she grasped the broad strokes at an intuitive level: whatever it was, it boiled or burned or blasted a lot easier around her. Melting too. Trying to eat ice cream was a bitch and a half.

Lynn pressed against the door, heat radiating off her. One of her pockets exploded briefly into flame, which she slapped out with a string of profanities. "Fuckin' lighter," she muttered. She reached and grabbed the explosives that Leotard had given her and tossed them with less than ideal care to him. "Yo go stand over there with that if you want to keep your eyebrows," Lynn said, grunting as she tried to channel her heat into the steel rather than the people behind her. "Okay Nat," she said. "Just think of it as one big, hot spoon. Have at it."
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