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Elly There is a burst of pain in Elly's ankle when she leaps from the van, her foot hitting the street at a slightly awkward angle. Her sense of balance is off; she expected the vehicle to come to an abrupt stop, yes, expected whatever it was she'd done not to go unnoticed. She hadn't expected an impact, though. That part she cannot make sense of. Holding on to the van to steady herself, the mutant girl slowly opens her eyes as far as the pain allows, which in practice amounts to an extremely near-sighted squint. Did she permanently injure them? It would be disastrous, but she cannot be sure. For the time being, it is bad enough that she can hardly see anything, that the bulk of sensory input comes from her other, inferior senses. The characteristic smell of a big city, not especially pleasant to begin with and downright alien to her after all these months in captivity, mingling with both burnt rubber and flesh; the asphalt beneath her feet, rough-textured and slightly on the warm side; the tinkling trickle of glass and the groan of metal as it settles after warping. It's all faint and bland and just insufficient, but it's also all she has to work with at this time, aggravating as it is for her. Elly squints lengthwise along the van, the bold lettering on its side not quite resolving into something legible, and down the street, where she can make out a slightly crumbled-looking but generally rectangular and white blob, sitting apparently motionless in the middle of…an intersection? A closer look ahead of her confirms the suspicion. Three-way? Four-way? It hardly matters, but a tiny part of her is curious all the same. It is an intersection, though, which explains a couple of things. Such as the impact. Or rather, what the other body involved in the collision most likely was. But that means… She sets off towards the unmoving blob, limping a little, keeping close to the vehicle beside her in case she loses her balance. The blob soon turns out to be another vehicle, a white(ish?) van, its side crushed and deformed where her own transport collided with it. Realisation gradually dawns within Elly, rising and making her throat feel strangely parched, strangely constricted. Is there anyone moving inside the van? She limps closer, as fast as she can now, heedless of the myriad fragments of shattered glass underfoot, prepared to thrust out her cuffed hands should she stumble and fall now that the other van lies behind her. Her eyesight is only improving ever so gradually, so slowly, but Elly is fairly certain she is counting several individuals in the wrecked van. But are they moving? Are they… "Oh no," the mutant girl breathes when she finally arrives at the vehicle. Gripping the passenger-side front door, she peers into the van's interior through the shattered window, squinting a little less than she did only moments before – but that could just be her rising horror overriding the pain. "Are you alright? I don't know how this could have happened. This wasn't supposed to happen!" she virtually pleads, then pauses to glance back over her shoulder at the other vehicle. "I…" the girl begins, then falls silent again when she stares at the ruined van in front of her, taking in its occupants. For one, a vat of colour appears to have exploded all over it and them. Were there any other vehicles involved in the accident? She looks around; it doesn't seem so. Elly chalks this up to her impaired eyesight, but the other things she's seeing aren't so easily explained. Have her eyes – and maybe her head? – really been damaged that much, or are those wings attached to the dark-haired girl in the back seat? Is the person who is…was…driving actually made of glass? Or stranger still (somehow), some kind of crystalline matter? And does that other other, buff girl really have feathers instead of hair? The van's three other occupants, all of them around her age or just slightly older apparently, look very much mundane by comparison, almost escaping her notice – though the fact that the woman in the passenger's seat definitely isn't conscious at the very least does send a pang of anxiety through her. There really are only two explanations for what she's seeing, she knows as much, and still she spends several long seconds just staring, dumbfounded, all thoughts of fleeing or doing much of anything driven from her mind for a moment. To those in the wrecked minivan who are actually conscious, Elly probably looks like an escapee from some particularly dismal high-security prison camp, what with her unadorned grey jumpsuit, cuffed hands, and bare feet, in addition to being quite skinny. She must've had her head shaved fairly recently – there has to be little if any hair beneath the bandages wrapped tight and neat around her skull, at any rate. A crimson scar, jagged and poorly healed, bisects her left eyebrow to boot, though this looks to be an older injury. It's her eyes that unequivocally mark her as being different, however: they appear to consist of solid white light, lacking an iris, or a pupil, or indeed any of the distinct features one would expect to see in an ordinary human eye. Curiously, they don't really appear to be emitting any light at this time, though. Hi everybody! I'm all sorts of stoked to get to be part of this game! 
MMAgCh fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Jul 12, 2015 |
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Feb 22, 2015 08:33
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Elly Having just come to terms with the surprising and bewildering fact that (unless her mind or eyes are deceiving her) at least several of the girls in the van are mutants just like her, a spidery mass proceeds to coalesce into a person right in front of Elly. Most of a person, anyway, with the rest of her a hundred basements' worth of wriggling, churning, crawling arachnids. She decides, right then and there, that this is her least favourite mutation ever. Elly doesn't like spiders. It's not the kind of phobia that sends her running away screaming, but something about the critters simply and irrationally unsettles her. Too many limbs, too many eyes, the way their spindly legs curl up when they die…at best, the sight of a nearby spider makes her recoil involuntarily; at worst she's all but paralysed by it, unable to look at it and unable to look away, freezing up like a frightened animal. Right now her reaction is more along the lines of the latter as a threefold conflict plays out within her: being utterly freaked out by so, so many spiders meets trying to make sense of the logistics of either a person consisting of spiders or some kind of arachnoid hive-mind shaping itself into a person meets being strangely reassured by the spider-girl-entity's sounding somewhat out of it herself. (Themselves?) As such she simply stares, unblinking, unable to keep herself from following the movements of every last one of the girl's eight-legged constituent parts as they skitter and climb and jitter…until, somehow, being addressed by the young woman who introduces herself as Sarah snaps her out of her stupor. For now. "I'm not injured," she tells Sarah, which is true enough – her ankle barely hurts anymore and her eyesight is continuing to return as well. "My name is Elly. I don't think it's going to be OK, though," she continues, turning to stare at the other van. FedEx? Like she's just cargo. Insult and injury both. Before this accident, her ordeal had at most made Elly feel frustrated, or terrified, or tormented – but now, for some reason, she feels angry, though this is evident only in her clenched fists and the slight tremor in her voice. "I tried to get away from the people in that van," the girl says, looking at each of the others in turn without addressing any of them in particular. "My eyes emitted some kind of intense heat, which I didn't know they could, and then this happened." She shakes her head, lost for words, and briefly looks as though she wants to punch the door of the van. Remembering the unconscious and possibly badly injured woman in the front seat, though, Elly reconsiders, opting to violently yank her hands apart a few times instead in an altogether pointless attempt to break the chain linking them. "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to hurt any of you! I shouldn't have done anything – I should be back in that van and let them do to me what they were going to do." Elly is staring at the FedEx van again, as though it might accelerate and run her down at any moment. "But I'm not, and they'll come looking for me, and I don't have anywhere to go." She looks at the evident mutants among the little group, although by now she wouldn't be surprised to find that all of them are…different, only less obviously so in some cases. "And people like you and me are less than animals to them, so I might be endangering you further merely by being here." She gives her handcuffs a weak jingle. "I should just leave, shouldn't I?" I honestly hadn't given any thought to what Elly thinks of spiders, but sure, let's have her not be fond of the little buggers at all!
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Feb 23, 2015 06:33
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Elly The blunt, unembellished expletive makes Elly's lips twitch in something resembling a smile, in spite of herself. It really sums up this entire disastrous turn of events very succinctly. "Sorry, I don't have a phone. I don't have anything really," she says. "And that is a long story. In a way. It'd be safe to answer 'yes' for most intents and purposes, I suppose." The anger radiating off the saurian girl (which is such a cool mutation because come on, dinosaurs!) is almost palpable, and somehow that endears her to Elly straight away…not because she might be angry on her behalf, but because it's the exact emotion making her own blood simmer right now, impotent though it might be. It feels good to have that much in common with someone right now. "She's your teacher?" the mutant girl then enquires, peering at the unconscious woman with renewed curiosity. She looks so young to be a teacher… "Are you on a field trip?" If so, they really could not have picked a worse time and place for it – or rather, she, Elly, could not have lost control on a worse day. Get seven innocent people into trouble, and at least one of them injured to boot. She can't let that happen again. Whatever the consequences for her. "I have some first-aid training," Elly speaks up. Which is stretching the truth almost to breaking point but sounds more reassuring than "I've absorbed a couple of textbooks on the subject", and as she can't bring herself to just run, she's eager to do something to help. Especially because it's all her fault in the first place. The least she can do is try and ascertain just how much damage she caused. "If any of you can do something about these, I'll have a look at…Tabby, you said her name was?" she offers, holding out her shackled wrists. "There wasn't an opportunity to stop and look for the keys." She gives Tara a small, apologetic smile, bending down a little awkwardly to offer the girl her hand (well, both of them effectively, given the circumstances) and help her pull herself to her feet. It helps that there are far fewer spiders to be seen now, admittedly. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to stare. Or make you feel…you know." Elly hasn't really talked about this kind of thing with anyone before – up until now she hadn't even met any other mutants, as far as she is aware –, but she's been subjected to That Look often enough to nip the very idea in the bud. "You seem perfectly nice. It's just that spiders give me the heeby jeebies. Especially when there are so many of them." The notion that the frankly petite woman slumped unconscious in her seat could and did go toe to toe with the Hulk briefly gives her pause, but Elly just as quickly realises that this isn't the time to be judging books by their cover. "I really hope you're right, Tara. If she's badly hurt…because of me…" The thought doesn't bear finishing; she has changed the subject before she even knows it. "You are venomous? Well, they – your spiders are? Is that as dangerous as it sounds?" Elly turns to warily eye the FedEx van once more, as she has been doing at regular intervals for the past couple of minutes. She's never going to be able to look at that company emblem again without flinching. As if the arrow wasn't bad enough. "You are right, though. Best to hold off on any venom injections. The way things have been going, it'd probably just cause an anaphylactic reaction on top of everything else." Assuming someone can get those handcuffs off Elly, she's going to briefly and carefully examine Tabby, just to check what general condition she's in. That'd be Treatment +14, minus the -5 penalty for not having any equipment on hand, I suppose. There's also Expertise (Medicine) +10 by way of Eidetic Memory, but I don't think that's applicable here? MMAgCh fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Mar 1, 2015 |
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Feb 23, 2015 21:36
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Elly "Hi. What's your name?" she says to the crystalline girl, looking at her curiously as she moves over to break her restraints. And looking some more after the fact, very intently, tilting her head slightly to one side after a while. It's vaguely similar to the stare she gave the fragmented Tara, although in this case she's clearly not paralysed by fear or disgust; rather, something about the other girl seems to utterly enthral her. Which doesn't really make the staring any more polite, of course. "…thank you," Elly finally remembers to respond, twisting and moving her wrists and arms this way and that, appreciating their restored range of movement. "Yes, thank you," she repeats, with a small smile this time. "I think I know most of your names now. You do all remember your name, don't you? You might have a concussion if you don't." "I don't know what their organisation is called, but the ones I met were all researchers. Scientists. Doctors, to an extent. Albeit not the kind you'd want to be treated by," Elly explains in a somewhat detached manner as she again looks through the shattered window on the passenger's side of the van. "Do you happen to know if there is a first-aid kit in this vehicle?" she then asks. "Most of you look like you could benefit from some first aid as well, not only your teacher." Assuming she can do so without jostling the unconscious woman in the front seat, Elly checks the glove compartment for one. "Which is not a substitute for professional medical attention, of course." She briefly pauses to listen for any sirens in the distance.
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Mar 2, 2015 05:23
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Elly "Crystal is a very nice name," Elly smiles. "And, yes, rather prescient as well. It's as if my parents had named me Lucyna, which means 'bright'." The smile suddenly leaves her lips. "But they have no way of knowing ahead of time, do they? What we'll become. And who is to say how they'd feel about it if they did?" The girl falls silent for a moment; on some level she seems to regret bringing this subject up at all. "Maybe it's better the way it is."
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Mar 2, 2015 07:08
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Elly "It would've been a much nicer name than the one I was given," she agrees, shaking the proffered hand and giving it a curious look. A multitude of questions is beginning to occur to Elly, but most of them she manages to keep to herself. "Was all that colour you, then? I thought I'd hurt my eyes even worse than I feared when I first saw the van. It looked like it'd crashed into a rainbow." The subject of un-motherly mothers has Elly clenching her fists again. "Mine is like that too, Rickie. She never liked me much, but after my abilities had manifested she despised me. So she and my father did the next best thing and gave me to these people. Sold, even, I believe," the girl explains with a nod towards the FedEx van, her voice curiously flat. It feels strange to be talking about it, and it hurts, but in a way it's also something of a relief. "You're not in trouble, though. Or rather, it'd be really unfair if anyone said you were, because this is all my fault." A pause. "I didn't know there was a place like that. I'm really sorry about ruining your outing like this. I don't imagine you get terribly many of them?" Elly's reaction to Regina taking her scent is much the same as her reaction to seeing the girl-turned-spiders for the first time: hold still. Don't move. Don't provoke her. It just seems the prudent thing to do. She doesn't really seem to mind otherwise, at least. "There were two men riding in the back with me, but I think I burned them," Elly says in a fairly matter-of-factly tone. She's not entirely sure what she did, but the screams, the heat, the smell…considered together, they don't leave much room for guesswork. "I don't know how many were riding up front." Surveying the interior of the crumpled van, Elly shakes her head. "I'm sorry, I can't get to the glove compartment like this. Not with your teacher here. And that's assuming there even is a first-aid kit in it." Frowning, she leans back and walks around the van, peeking in each of the windows and looking in the back in hopes of spying something appropriately brightly-coloured, bearing that telltale white cross. Finally, arriving at the less damaged driver's side of the vehicle, Elly climbs in and attempts to establish whether she can safely and reasonably comfortably work on the unconscious woman from here. "Crystal, do you think you could remove the front of the van if needed?" she asks, remembering how casually the mutant girl made her cuffs come apart. There may not be any jaws of life available, but being able to do that kind of thing to solid steel with your bare hands has to be a close second. "Or at least peel open the chassis on the passenger's side so we can more easily get to your teacher? The car is a write-off either way, most likely."
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Mar 3, 2015 21:25
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Elly "I believe I did," she tells Tara. "They were threatening me and then something happened with my eyes, something powerful enough that I hurt myself a bit. I thought I'd gone blind at first." Up close, the skin around her eyes does look somewhat reddened and blistered. "If I'm sorry about what I did, it's only because it caused all of this to happen, somehow," she then says softly. "I didn't mean to hurt anyone else…to hurt you. But those men? They'd been part of the experiments. They were taking me to another facility to be killed and dissected." Her lips are a thin, taut line as she stares again at the van she'd been transported in. "I wasn't thinking at the time. About anything. But now that I am, I can't honestly say I feel very sorry for whatever I did to them." "You're not a freak, you are the most beautiful person I've ever seen," Elly blurts out. "In a purely platonic sense, that is," she adds, but most likely the damage's been done at this point; acute and lightning-fast her brain might be, but her mouth sometimes still manages to circumvent it altogether. The fact that she proceeds to blush and studiously avoid further eye contact with Crystal suggests that Elly realises as much herself, at least. A setup? She considers it, but the idea seems outrageous. Granted, her captors are the sort of people who might attempt such a thing if they thought they'd be able to get away with it – but surely the planning and logistics involved would never justify the results. Would they? Pun not intended, I swear.
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Mar 4, 2015 05:56
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Elly She gives Tara a small smile and her comforting hand a similarly small pat. "Moving past it sounds good. Even if it's more easily said than done, I imagine. At least it's not very probable that I'll find myself in this kind of situation again. With someone telling me to my face that they intend to murder me, I mean." She's resolved not to, in fact. She's not going to go through anything like it again. It is roughly at this point that something in the passenger-side footwell catches Elly's attention. Something greenish that doesn't look like it should be there. For a change thankful for her long limbs, she carefully leans across Tabby, reaches down…and produces a slightly battered-looking green box stamped with a bold white cross, promising basic medical paraphernalia. "Not everything is going entirely wrong today, at least," Elly murmurs, visibly relieved, and busies herself with the first-aid kit, first ascertaining which of its contents are still usable before setting to work. Very well Mr GM, I am spending my hero point to cast Summon First-Aid Kit! As promised, Elly is then going to briefly and carefully examine Tabby. Treatment +14, possibly minus the -5 circumstance penalty for not having any equipment on hand. There's also Expertise (Medicine) +10 by way of Eidetic Memory, but I don't think that's applicable here. She'll use the contents of the kit to do as much patching-up as possible, starting with Tabby's head wound (unless it'd require moving her etc.) before moving on to the other girls.
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Mar 4, 2015 08:17
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Elly The hesitation in Crystal's voice and the look on her face don't make much sense to Elly until she remembers the one time someone paid her a compliment, such as it was, after her powers had manifested: that shy boy at school telling her that her luminous eyes looked "really cool". With everyone else ignoring her at best and actively picking on her at worst, she naturally assumed he was mocking her as well and responded rather dismissively – but now, hearing a tone similar to hers at the time in someone else's voice, she suddenly is second-guessing herself, however belatedly. "I meant it, you know," Elly ventures to tell the crystalline girl, albeit without quite making direct eye contact. "I'm not making fun of you, Crystal. I can see things most people can't, but even so I've never laid eyes on a more breathtaking sight. Only the stars in the night sky come close." She chances a glance at her. "I just felt you might like to know. If your life is anything like mine you're rarely ever told that there's anything good or appealing to who you are, and I don't think it should be that way." Having spent a couple of minutes examining the woman in the passenger's seat, and then some more time tending to her injuries as best she could using the contents of the first-aid kit, the mutant girl climbs out of the van. "Your teacher's condition is serious but stable," she tells the other girls. "Her ribs appear to be bruised, her arm is broken, and she has a fairly severe concussion, but she'll live." Elly tries to smile encouragingly as she says this, but she just…can't. "I've splinted her arm, so it should be safe to move her as long as we're careful." Elly then steps away from the wrecked van, leaving the girls alone with their teacher. She needs a little time to herself; she needs to get away from it all. From the aftermath of her handiwork. It was one thing to see the ruined vehicle with its shattered windows and deformed metal; it was one thing, even, to see its student occupants, bruised and dishevelled but generally unhurt; but it was another thing entirely to study their unconscious teacher up close, to witness the blood trickling down her forehead, to feel the fractured bone in her arm beneath the discoloured skin. Elly is too accomplished an introvert to really let it show, but she is disgusted and horrified by what she has done now that the extent of it has become so clear, now that the degree of her guilt has begun to truly sink in. Right now she can't bear to look any of the others in the eye, and she's not sure she'll ever be able to meet the young woman's gaze in particular. She'd dearly like to forget it all, to pretend that none of this has happened, to just lose herself as she has often done before, but somehow the mutant girl can't – that bright, blissful oblivion is barred to her today. The stinging sensation in her soles as she walks tells Elly that she stepped in a few pieces of glass at some point, but she barely even cares. That other wrecked car, the FedEx van, is on her mind now, the one that sits in the middle of the streets like a mortally wounded monster, ominous in its lifeless silence – dead, perhaps, and perhaps not. She has to know, though. If the injuries of the young woman in the car behind her were merely a side-effect of her…outburst, what did she do to the people in her captors' van? And they were people, no matter how reprehensible their intentions and actions. Elly is vaguely afraid of what she'll find, of feeling worse than she already does, but she's even more afraid of not knowing. Knowledge always was the key; if she is to master her mutant powers, she has to know precisely what they're capable of. She simply can't not know, even if she must gaze into an abyss to find out. Gonna check out the FauxEx van! Peeking in the front first before moving on to the back.
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Mar 13, 2015 03:40
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Elly The downside of possessing supremely acute vision, it turns out, is that you essentially become hyper-aware of everything down to the most minute particulars of whatever it is you lay eyes on, even if it's the most horrifying sight you've ever encountered. And the downside of possessing a borderline-photographic memory, in turn, is that you are likely to be stuck remembering that richly detailed image for the rest of your life. The driver is bad enough. Granted, as with the girls' teacher, it was the actual collision that did the damage…most of it, anyway. Still, the burns don't escape Elly's notice. She couldn't even see the man, and yet that panel of solid metal between him and the van's cargo bay failed to shield him entirely from the force of her powers. Would he have lived if it hadn't been for the ensuing crash? It's difficult to say. Of course, the only reason the accident happened at all was because of her, so it really is a moot point. She moves on, more slowly now. If the driver ended up like this, what hope was there for the other two men? Elly stares at the grisly tableau in the back of the van for precisely three seconds, though they are like hours to her. It doesn't seem like it should be possible. She knows she is capable of emitting sufficiently bright light from her eyes to briefly dazzle and blind someone, but certainly not to injure. And least of all…this. To turn living, breathing people into charred husks. It doesn't seem possible. Holding on to one of the van's rear doors as though it were a lifeline, the mutant girl ambles away in a semi-circle, dazed, until she slumps against the side of the vehicle. Now she knows. Three men dead. Burned, almost incinerated, because of her. Because of her mutant powers. Elly never once imagined she might use these powers to injure, let alone kill someone, and yet she has done so now, has murdered three people with them. Her powers are dangerous; she is dangerous. Deadly, even. So this is what she's capable of. She almost wishes she hadn't gone to find out after all. As if on cue, the scar slashing across Elly's eyebrow starts to itch. She reaches up and scratches it, but it gets her thinking. She received that scar simply because she was a mutant, because someone felt she was the kind of creature to throw a rock at. Back then she had done nothing wrong – but this time? What would the average person think once it came to light that she murdered those people? Even if she were to explain that she didn't mean to kill them, that they'd been keeping her captive and experimenting on her, and even if anyone believed a mutie like her: would they care? The girls from Ms. Frost's were right, Elly realises: it is unwise to stay here any longer. Not just because something about all of this simply feels wrong, but because a group of mutants are just asking to get into trouble, lingering near the site of three violent murders. Even if they're innocent. Based on everything she knows about the way mutants are treated, Elly would be very much surprised if the police didn't take an "arrest them first, ask questions later" approach at best…and whatever else may lie in store for her, she has no desire to be imprisoned again. Pushing herself away from the FedEx van, Elly limps back to the others, who are bound to notice she looks a good deal paler than before, making her otherwise barely noticeable freckles stand out. "Sarah was right, we need to leave," she tells them, a bit of a quaver in her voice, "the seven of you especially. You'd just be held guilty by association for what…" At a loss for words, she turns to look, expressionless, at the wrecked FedEx van – and turns back just in time to watch the other, very much intact FedEx van come tearing around the corner down the street. "They're here," she whispers. "It's them." jesus christ robo Also I usually don't mean for those posts to end up quite so long and I am sorry 
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Mar 14, 2015 05:05
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Elly "I hope that wasn't a genuine FedEx van," Elly murmurs, crouching behind the girls' wrecked ride and rubbing her eyes. They don't hurt so much any more as they sting and itch incessantly, but they're still functioning nowhere near as well as they normally do, keeping her from discerning anything more insightful about the crashed van or its passengers.
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Mar 20, 2015 20:09
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Elly It is a dilemma. She is glad that as far as delivery vans are concerned, that one wasn't an innocent bystander…but she's less than glad to hear it's filled with more of her captors. And armed ones, no less. Elly supposes she can't have it both ways. "Weapons? As in, firearms?" If the device Sarah looted from the first van is any indication, the answer to that question is going to be 'yes'. "We ought to get your teacher out of the car and into cover. Can you give me a hand?" Elly asks the winged girl, whose name she doesn't think she caught – with Crystal and Regina already farther afield and Rickie, Sarah, and Tara doing whatever their respective thing is, she seems to be the only one in a position to help.
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Mar 21, 2015 23:25
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Elly She stares at the Texan for a couple of seconds in confusion. Is she…? Yes. That must be it, as strange as it seems. "I see. A joke," Elly states. "Can and will. Ability as opposed to intent." It's a good thing she read about it once, or she still would be thoroughly lost. Even if it appears to her a strange time to be making any kind of joke. "Very well. Will someone give me a hand, then?" she repeats, already moving around the car and kneeling on the driver's seat – in part to help lift the unconscious woman out of the van more easily, in part to make sure there's something between her and the attackers once the bullets, or beams of energy, start flying. The mutant girl would rather get shot herself than let these people come to any more harm if it can be avoided…and someone has to be proactive about it. "They may still try to take me alive, but I don't think they'll care who else gets caught in the crossfire. Least of all other mutants."
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Mar 29, 2015 21:11
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Elly Strange things are going on, though Elly supposes that is almost to be expected when several mutants are put on the spot like this. Her would-be captors' guns spontaneous malfunctioning, while highly convenient, simply puzzles her; Tara's dissolving into a flood of spiders still creeps her out, as nice as the actual girl seems to be; and the giant brown critter's sudden exploding outright makes Elly cower against the side of the van. Cautiously poking up her head again she eyes the fiery aftermath, feeling vaguely but uncomfortably reminded of what she wrought with her own powers only a few minutes earlier. "I take it that was supposed to happen?" she asks, glancing at Crystal and Rickie. The purpose of the beam of focused light, courtesy of the former, seems clear enough, but Elly hadn't expected the other girl's curious constructs to be so…inflammable. She's not really sure either of them did, for that matter. Not that she is especially inclined to argue with the results right now, even if the idea of more people potentially burning to death doesn't appeal to her to say the least. Between all of this and the fact that her eyes, even in their current state, are so much keener than any of her other senses, Elly doesn't notice the incoming aircraft until it is hovering low above the street already. When she at long last does notice it she starts, for one panicked moment feeling sure that her malefactors are receiving reinforcements by air – until the particular shape of the craft sinks in. A number of newspaper photos come to mind, the occasional report on the television…yes, she has seen this kind of aircraft before. And, unless there's some cruel irony at work here, whoever is aboard that craft seems highly unlikely to be on the side of their attackers. Then its occupants reveal themselves, and again there's that mild jolt of recognition. In spite of her own nature, Elly has never taken a great interest in mutant affairs, or at least no more so than in most other flavours of information; as such, she knows who Emma Frost and Iceman are, but that is the extent of her familiarity with either of them. (Though it seems running a reform school for mutant delinquents is one thing Elly can add to the list in the case of Ms. Frost.) The blue-furred mutant who comes bounding out of the aircraft to tend to the girls' injured teacher, though…Elly knows him. If only because their interests intersect just a little bit. Taking hold of the ruined van's front fender, she stands up and moves away a little to give Beast room to work, wincing as she drives a shard of glass another fraction of an inch into her foot. "I really liked your article on the Riemann hypothesis in Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik last year, Dr. McCoy," Elly blurts out apropos of nothing – anything to take her mind off the singular disaster she has caused, presumably. And, perhaps, understandably. Besides, it was a very insightful read. It is at this point that Emma Frost fairly orders her charges into the aircraft. The woman's curt tone is far from unfamiliar to Elly; rarely had her mother addressed her in any other way since the emergence of her powers, as though the girl's very existence had become an unforgivable affront to her. That said tone isn't directed at Elly now, primarily if at all, does little to make it rankle any less – it wasn't right then, it isn't right now. Herself surprised by how convinced she feels of this, Elly pushes herself away from the ruined van and limps towards the stern-faced mutant woman. "Do you want me to come aboard as well, ma'am?" she asks, perfectly polite and respectful but undaunted by Frost's severe demeanour. "There is nowhere for me to go other than jail, I expect, or back into the captivity I barely escaped from." Elly blinks, something she's been doing less and less over the past few minutes. "Your students aren't going to be in trouble, are they? They most likely saved my life today. And all of this," she says, sweeping one arm across the wreckage strewn around the street, holding Frost's gaze all the while, "is essentially my fault. So if anyone is to get into trouble because of what happened, it should be me." MMAgCh fucked around with this message at 10:27 on Apr 11, 2015 |
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Apr 11, 2015 09:59
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Elly The bright-eyed mutant girl gives Regina and Sarah a small smile as they trudge past her to board the plane. "Thank you, too," she calmly tells them – and while there is not a great deal of emotion in it, given everything that happened they can likely guess that much is left unsaid by Elly, deliberately or not.
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Apr 15, 2015 21:29
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Elly "I taught myself," she affirms, smiling just a little. "The glass, yes," Elly then echoes as she carefully tiptoes across the shard-strewn stretch of asphalt. There were other things on her mind at the time, admittedly. If she could even be said to have been thinking at all. It's all rather strange in hindsight. "Very well, ma'am," the mutant girl replies almost meekly and shuffles past Miss Frost, dwelling on some of the things the woman said. Such as the attempt to read her mind and the apparent failure thereof, both of which equally confound Elly. On the other hand, the latter would explain her bringing up the wrecked car: it seems a fairly minor concern given everything else that happened, but if Miss Frost really couldn't read her mind (which Elly is both bewildered and relieved by), she probably wouldn't know about the full extent of events yet, explaining her focusing on such a triviality. Of course, this also means that the conversation they'll surely be having in the none too distant future will be less edifying still… Elly is slow to board the Blackbird. This is in part because, with the adrenaline wearing off at last, every step she takes sends a pang of pain up her leg, and in part because the notion of entering the plane, whose interior seems positively sepulchral and cramped compared to the vast, sunny out-of-doors all around her, downright appals the girl. It looks considerably roomier than her cell at the facility or the van she was made to ride in, certainly, but it's still a closed space, and having just spent a few delightful minutes outside and free of any restraining devices for the first time in months, Elly is suddenly discovering that the notion of entering such a place again somehow unsettles her. Not that she has much of a choice. Which is why she limps aboard, and finds a seat, and buckles herself in – again with some reluctance, because the sensation of straps holding her securely in place evokes nothing but unpleasant memories. To damp that little uneasy voice near the base of her skull, Elly studies the plane's final two occupants. She recognises its pilot, of course, thanks to his distinctive visor if for no other reason…although recalling its purpose calls a number of associations to mind she can do without right now, so she turns her unblinking eyes towards the other man instead. There's something oddly reassuring about Wolverine's being as rugged and plain-spoken as Emma Frost is elegant and refined – no ostentatiousness here, no affectations. A human being first, and a mutant and superhero second. Right now, at any rate, that kind of…ordinariness helps quell her lingering discomfiture more than anything. That, and the smell of cigar smoke reminds Elly of her grandpa. Not that she ought to take more than a couple of steps down memory lane in that direction either. "And none of that would've happened if it hadn't been for my burning three men to death first," she adds to Rickie's explanation, still determined to shoulder as much of the blame as she can. "But that's not why they'd been holding me captive, no. I didn't know I could do that and neither did they, I think." Jumping a little in her seat as Tara's appetite makes itself known (and not altogether at ease with the implications), Elly then raises her hands to regard the broken cuffs. Like just about everything she laid eyes on at the facility they clearly are based on an original design, looking a good deal more delicate than the handcuffs used by the average cop but being just as strong – enough so to keep her hands firmly bound, at any rate, which admittedly doesn't take much. Thanks to Crystal's earlier efforts the chain linking both cuffs has come entirely loose of the one encircling her left wrist, leaving it looking like a fairly innocuous, sleek metal bracelet. "I will keep this one," Elly says, lowering her left hand again. "An external, physical reminder, you know. But I'd be grateful if you could remove the other cuff."
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Apr 21, 2015 01:02
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Elly "I haven't got anything. Tara does, though," she tells the statuesque girl, pointing towards the back of the plane and the source of the incessant, enthusiastic munching. "Do you even need to eat in the first place, Crystal? You don't look like organic food would do anything for you, at least." Regina's showing off her toe-claw clearly intrigues Elly, making her lean forward in her seat to take a better look on account of her still-impaired eyesight. "It looks rather handy. Especially being retractable like that," she comments. "And by the way, charging those men like that was very bold of you, even if their guns weren't functioning properly. I've seen them carry telescopic batons and the like." "You know what it's like?" Elly asks and blinks in surprise. She doesn't enquire any further, her ordeal too fresh in her mind to make her want to know any more just yet, but it is a small relief that Wolverine at least has a notion of what she went through…and it is, equally, a rather unsettling idea that there are more places out there like the lab-cum-prison that was her "home" for so long. "Not any way I could," she then counters. "You might argue that I shouldn't feel bad about what I did to those men, although I do. But what happened to these girls?" she says, looking around at each of them. "To their teacher?" she adds, glancing towards where Beast and the winged girl are gathered around the table bearing the still-unconscious woman. "All of it a direct result of what I did. I may not have meant to do it, I may not even have known I could, but I caused all of it nevertheless. And that's too dear a price to pay for my freedom." Picking up the severed cuff Elly examines it up close, fascinated by the flawlessly smooth cut through the metal. "Thank you," she then tells Wolverine, with a smile that looks somewhat more genuine than is usual for her. And there's Miss Frost again, even more bluntly accusatory than before. Elly can feel her barely recovered composure, that cool and bright and rational state of mind knocked off kilter by the car crash and its aftermath, beginning to dwindle as she faces the woman, catalysed by the hideous sense of guilt rearing its head again in the dark depths of her gut. But first, before explaining herself, she gives Sarah a small nod and an equally cursory smile. "It's fine. None taken. – They were in the wrong place at the wrong time, ma'am," Elly then addresses Frost; there's a slight strain to her voice that wasn't there when she spoke to Wolverine or any of the girls, and she generally enunciates a little less precisely than she did a minute ago. "I'd just been told that in order to fathom the workings of my brain I was to be 'taken apart', as my captor put it. While still alive for all I know, given the modus operandi of these people," she says, indicating her shaven, bandaged scalp. "I tried to resist, uselessly so. The guard made to strike me with his stun baton. I feared these were the last conscious moments of my life, and I…didn't want to die. Not like that. Then something burst out of me. They were protected against the light, but not against this." Elly raises her hand to gingerly touch the blistered skin around her eyes. "It hurt me, but it killed the two men in the back of the van, and it either killed or severely injured the driver. He lost control of the vehicle, which then crashed into the van belonging to your school. Pure, unfortunate coincidence is all it was." The mutant girl looks at Emma Frost in silence for a moment. "For what it's worth, ma'am: knowing what I do now, if I had to live this day over again, I wouldn't lift a finger to defend myself. I'd rather die than let innocent people come to harm," Elly finally asserts, blinking twice. "Least of all your students, who've been nothing but, well, nice to me when they had numerous reasons to be angry instead. They even fought off the reinforcements sent by my captors. I think they're good people." Having said her piece she then lowers her eyes, running her fingers along the outside of the sleek handcuff-turned-bracelet around her wrist as though trying to read a Braille inscription embossed on it.
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Apr 22, 2015 02:26
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Elly Regina's sudden change leaves Elly largely unperturbed, although something in what she says afterwards makes her briefly clutch the armrests of her seat. "We'll have to agree to disagree. I'm not opposed to self-preservation as a rule, only when it impinges on the well-being of innocent bystanders," she calmly explains. "But the damage is done either way," she adds, glancing again in the direction of the Blackbird's med-bay. "I hope your teacher is going to be all right. If she isn't, I may not be able to cope." There is a slight, brief tremor in her voice as she says this, and a distant look to her expression. "So at the very least, you could be said to eat socially in the same sense that people drink socially?" Elly muses, rather oblivious to whether the subject is terribly appropriate or whether anyone really cares. "Though it does sound like you require and digest food the way an organism generally does." She smiles, briefly, at Crystal. "You know, while I dislike the term 'freak show', we do all seem to be giving traditional biology a run for its money, don't we? Having wings, turning into Deinonychus antirrhopus if I'm not mistaken, or doing whatever it is you do, Rickie. What is that substance, anyway? Other than highly inflammable." MMAgCh fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Apr 23, 2015 |
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Apr 23, 2015 08:09
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Elly "And it's only your sweat you can control in this manner?" Elly asks. "Though from what little I've seen you're able to create quite a range of shapes and colours, at least. And at a distance, too." She then gives the very slightest of shrugs. "It's only perspiration, albeit perspiration which it may be safer to keep away from open flames. Still, as far as mutant powers that revolve around bodily fluids are concerned I think you could be off much worse." "You don't sound very happy about it, although I suppose a reform school isn't the kind of place to engender that kind of feeling. Even if it arguably should be." Elly tilts her head a little. "But you do seem nowhere near as unhappy as you looked when you wreaked havoc on your father's press conference, Crystal." She blinks, and smiles. "Not that I blame you. I've found the video to be rather cathartic to watch, actually. I dislike violence, but nevertheless, it helped keep me going through some…dark times, when I had very little else to hold on to." There's another blink and a slightly bigger smile. "To think I used to believe that causing a folding chair to ricochet the way you did wasn't even physically possible!"
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Apr 24, 2015 08:59
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Elly "I should hope I'll never come to like people getting hurt," Elly rejoins. "That's simply not right, regardless of the genes involved." She blinks a few times. "But whatever I did to escape this time, I can't do it again. It inflicted an excessive amount of damage, it was wildly inaccurate, and it felt like I was about to burn out my own eyes besides." She regards the others. "Any of your mutant powers would've been vastly more useful in my situation, I think. But of course that's neither here nor there." Looking at her hands, Elly briefly clenches them into fists. "Even some basic skill at hand-to-hand combat may have served me well. That does seem like a bit of a shortcoming in hindsight, wouldn't you agree?" she asks nobody in particular. "It certainly feels like it is one now." "Yes, ma'am," Elly duly replies, though as with just about everything else she has said, Emma Frost does not appear to acknowledge it in any way. Herself in turn not acknowledging this lack of acknowledgement, the mutant girl calmly undoes her lap belt and gingerly rises to her feet before giving Wolverine and the girls she has been speaking with a smile that is, by her standards, downright heartfelt. "It's been…good to talk to someone again after all this time," she tells them sincerely. "Thank you, all of you. And for speaking up for me, too." A dozen-odd awkward steps and some drops of blood left on the metal floor of the Blackbird later, Elly joins Beast and the winged girl. "Excuse me, Doctor McCoy? Miss Frost wants you to take a look at me." Leaning on an empty table to take some of her weight off her injured feet, she looks at the other girl. "Thank you for lending a hand, earlier," she says. "I'm not sure the van would have provided any appreciable cover if those men had actually opened fire, but it surely was better than no cover at all." Almost reluctantly, she then glances at the woman on the other table before quickly averting her eyes again. "Will there…she has suffered no permanent injury, has she?" Elly asks haltingly, in spite of herself. "As far as I could tell her arm and her ribs should mend, but…her concussion, you know, and the brain…" She trails off, white-knuckled as she clutches the table she's leaning against and breathing somewhat hard, visibly distraught. MMAgCh fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Apr 26, 2015 |
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Apr 26, 2015 05:19
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Elly "I'm Elly." She returns the smile. "That's all right, Anna. You were involved in a serious accident, and it's quite hard to keep a level head under circumstances like today's in any case. I didn't really manage to, either. If I had, the soles of my feet wouldn't be peppered with pieces of glass the way they are." Elly looks almost surprised as she glances down at the winged girl's comforting hand. "Thank you," she murmurs, lips quivering in an ultimately failed attempt to smile. "I'm sorry, I'm – I don't usually feel like this. Before today there was only one other time I did, and that was when…" She shakes her head, exhaling tremulously. "You don't appreciate the emotional release afforded by simple crying until you're no longer capable of it. It's like there's something searing hot about to violently rip open your chest from the inside out, or maybe it's cold and heavy like a glacier and slowly trying to crush your chest, or maybe it's doing both at the same time somehow, and it feels almost exactly like drowning, and –" Grimacing and turning a little pale, Elly lowers her luminous eyes to meet the other girl's, speaking in a slightly strangled voice. "I don't – I don't mean to impose on you, Anna, but I could really use a hug right now." Her worst fears allayed, the mutant girl closes her eyes for a few seconds, presumably breathing an inward sigh of relief. "You don't blame me," she then quietly repeats. "Nor do your classmates, it appears. I'd almost believe you if you claimed she," Elly says, meaning their unconscious teacher on the table opposite, "won't blame me either. Even though there aren't very many ways in which this day could've turned out any worse for you all." She glances towards the front of the plane. "But I don't know about your headmistress. Miss Frost is your headmistress, yes? She clearly was very unhappy with me." Elly blinks. "If Miss Frost is as much like my mother as she seems to be, this is just the calm before the storm."
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Apr 28, 2015 02:28
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Elly "For what it's worth, I think I left some of the worst ones back in that van," Elly calmly tells Crystal as she begins to limp towards the med-bay, "and I can't say I enjoyed it one bit." She says nothing for the longest time and barely even moves at first other than to put her arms around the shorter girl, mindful of her wings, but before long she does embrace her more closely. There not being much that's as consoling as a sincere, affectionate hug, Elly eventually manages to calm down, breathing more freely and more easily again and looking considerably less pale as well. "If Regina hadn't called her your teacher I would've thought she was another student," the girl admits with a small smile. "But you're all more than nice, so it makes a strange sort of sense that she should be, too." Her smile broadens as she squeezes Anna right back. "After what you've been through, I'd expect most people could use one. Even if they don't know or want to admit it. And it was a good hug, too. One of the best I've had, though there haven't been many to compare it to." She blinks. "Certainly none that involved wings. So soft. And here I figured their main benefit would be allowing you to fly or at least glide." "Your first opportunity to prove you're no longer a threat to society, and this is what happens," Elly says with just the hint of a smile touching her lips. There's something surreal to the entire premise; these girls are much kinder than many of the so-called upstanding members of society she has encountered, after all. Then again, Rickie did call it a home for wayward girls, not a supermax correctional facility for mutant enemies of the state. "But unless any of you are supposed to be capable of precognition, I can't imagine what she could possibly hold you responsible for." There then follows a blink, and a slight frown, and a like lowering of Elly's voice. "I'm fairly sure that nothing Miss Frost might possibly do could be worse than what I went through these past months, but you're not painting a very encouraging picture all the same if that genuinely concerns you, Anna." Not that Ms Frost's behaviour is especially encouraging.
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Apr 29, 2015 06:32
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Elly Elly watches and listens in silence as Beast tends to her injuries and explains how to further treat them. "Thank you very much, Doctor McCoy. I'll be sure follow your instructions to a T," she responds when he has finished. "And I'd appreciate it if you could prescribe some analgesics, please. I've had to endure enough pain recently to last me for a very long time." She scans the resulting prescription slip he hands her before folding it and tightly closing her fingers around it, what with her jumpsuit lacking pockets. "My eyesight is slowly recovering, too, I think. I was worried I'd damaged it permanently when I did whatever precisely it was I did," Elly finally says, a relieved smile briefly curling her lips. "I won't tell anybody if you don't want me to," Elly responds quite seriously. "But that's a good thing, not ignoring those people. Everyone should have somebody looking out for them." She tilts her head a little, fixing Anna with an intense stare. "There's nothing worse than not having a single soul in the entire world care what's happening to you." Blinking, Elly leans back a little on the table, relaxing again. "That has to be nice, knowing someone who's just like you. More or less, anyway. And with mutations appearing to manifest in such diverse ways, it's probably far from a given that there'd even be another winged girl at your school at all," she suggests. "I'm not surprised Jean's greater airspeed comes at a cost. There's always a trade-off in nature. In her case, that means she's faster, but not as quiet or huggable," Elly smiles. "Still, wings are wings, and I envy both of you," she adds, sighing a little. "Slipping the surly bonds of earth, and all that." "We didn't," she agrees, "though neither did those men pointing guns at us. But I wouldn't be surprised if no one cared to hear our side of the story." Granted, up until today she never had guns aimed at her, futuristic ones or otherwise, but Elly is sadly familiar with the way public opinion tends to work when it comes to mutants all the same. "I actually am very slightly underweight according to the body mass index, for what that is worth," Elly notes, smiling briefly to indicate no offence has been taken. "That's fine. You've already provided emotional support, Anna. That's just as valuable." She frowns a little at Crystal. "I should hope not. You had to protect yourselves as well, in any case. There's no way those men would've just let any of you walk away. You had a glimpse of what they're like." Somehow, getting from the Blackbird to the administrative building feels like a walk-slash-limp of shame. During her time in captivity Elly had come to simply accept her jumpsuited, shaven-headed appearance, never really reflecting on it, and immediately after her escape there were countless other things on her mind – but seeing all these other girls now, unblemished and dressed perfectly properly and casually, she can't help but feel awkward. Embarrassed, even, though it's not her fault she looks the way she does. Leaning on Crystal as they walk, Elly glances briefly at each of the onlookers, her restored vision allowing her to take in everything there is to see in the blink of an eye, before focusing again on their destination, suddenly wishing they'd reached it already. Once they do, she smiles and nods her thanks to Crystal and Sarah for helping her, and zeroes in on the nearest wall to lean against it while they wait. "I should be able to manage, thank you. As long as they'll offer me a chair at some point."
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May 6, 2015 06:26
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Elly The school is a very nice-looking place, Elly has to admit. Not that it takes much to impress someone who has been locked up and (ab)used as a human guinea pig for months, but even so she appreciates the neatly-kept grounds, breathes in the fresh air, and briefly admires the stars. Oh, the stars! They'd always been some of Elly's favourite things in the world, and having her eyesight enhanced by way of mutation increased her enjoyment of them by at least an order of magnitude. Now is not the time to pause and drink them in, of course, but hopefully an opportunity will arise before too long. Indeed, those girls are all mutants as well, and unmistakably so at that. This is perfectly all right with Elly, of course; if anything, she's slightly intrigued by how varied their mutations appear to be. At the same time she is, in hindsight, grateful that her own appearance is relatively human – the kind of treatment she'd have been subjected to back in her family's neighbourhood if she'd stood out like that does scarcely bear thinking about. The furnishings and ambiance of Miss Frost's office hardly come as a surprise. It's all very austere, tidy, and…clinical, somehow, in spite or perhaps because of the expensive décor. A comparison could be made on some level between this office and the facility Elly was held at, between Emma Frost and any of the scientists there who went about their work in an equally distant and professional manner. Not that it'd be a fair one; even if Miss Frost really cares as little as her coolly reserved bearing suggests, everything else Elly has seen of the school – its picturesque grounds, for one, and the cadre of students who seem, so far at any rate, healthy and well-adjusted and really just nice – makes it look like it would be a decent place to live. To be safe. Or it's all just a really good front. Despite her injuries Elly doesn't immediately take a seat, unless someone tells her to. The others, she reasons, deserve to sit down no less than she does; they've been through a lot as well today, after all, and leaning on the backrest of one of the chairs seems to let her take enough of her weight off her feet as well. "From the beginning? As you wish, ma'am. My name is Elliott Kowalski," she then says without further ado, staring at her hands, "though I dislike that name. Elliott. I think my parents were disappointed with me from the beginning, with what I was: a sickly girl, rather than a strapping boy. They would've given me a proper name otherwise, I believe. Like Lucyna, perhaps," she adds, smiling a little as she glances at Crystal and Rickie. "I wanted to please them, I really did. That's why I thought everything was going to change the day my mutant abilities manifested. And it did, I suppose, but not for the better." Though Emma Frost won't be able to appreciate the difference, the girls who talked to Elly prior to the arrival of the adult cavalry may notice that her diction as a whole has changed somewhat. Having had some time to gather her composure, she's speaking in more clipped and precise tones now, as though she were merely reciting something she's rehearsed a dozen times already; between this and her generally unblinking stare, the overall effect is a mildly off-putting one. "Nineteen months ago, someone tried to mug me. When he drew a knife, my eyes suddenly lit up, like someone had flipped a switch. I didn't even really flash them at him the way I later found I could, but he took off running all the same when he saw them. I barely took notice of the fact that I'd almost been mugged, though. What mattered was that I could suddenly see things in a way I'd never seen them before. Clearer, more colourful, more detailed. Some things I hadn't been able to see at all. And I can barely begin to describe what my mind had become all of a sudden. Made of light. Words cannot do it justice. It is such a bright, beautiful place." Elly smiles serenely as she says this. "The world suddenly seemed so slow, but that really was because my thoughts were so fast now. Like light itself. My eyes as well, in a sense. I could thumb through the book I was holding like a flip-book, and yet I would remember all of it perfectly, every word. I still do." Elly looks up for the first time. "I thought this would finally make my parents happy. Even if they'd consider it a gift from God, perhaps. I ran home immediately to tell them. To show them what I could do now." She stares silently at the ground for a moment. "It did not go as I'd hoped. My father became terrified of me. From that time onward, he'd only spend as much time around me as he absolutely had to. My mother simply hated me. Right then and there, when I showed them, she slapped me and called me a freak. That's when I discovered I was no longer capable of producing tears. I suppose it makes sense, physiologically speaking. My eyes don't require lubrication any more, after all," she muses dispassionately. The girl falls silent for a moment. "We lived in a very conservative neighbourhood in Detroit. Full of pious people who felt that 'love thy neighbour' didn't extend to mutants. I had all sorts of insults thrown at me whenever I went out. More than just insults, occasionally," she adds, rubbing the ugly, poorly healed scar above her eye. "My father's business even suffered as a result, and my parents became all but ostracised at their church. I didn't fare much better at school, so eventually I started skipping it. More and more often. I spent the time haunting libraries instead, just…reading. It didn't matter what. I simply craved knowledge. And I was eager to determine the full extent of my abilities. It was educational, and fun, and a great distraction besides. Nobody bothered me there, luckily." "One day, my mother made me get in the car. She said she was taking me to see some 'doctors', who would hopefully be able to 'fix' me. That was thirty-two weeks and six days ago." Elly frowns, twisting her new bracelet around her wrist. "I'm reasonably sure my mother was paid in return for turning me over to those men. They took me to a scientific facility. Half hospital, half laboratory. And as secure as a prison, too, as I eventually discovered." She blinks. "For the first two weeks, I thought I'd actually get to go home again before long. I hated the idea that I needed 'fixing', but I thought these 'doctors' would eventually give up and return me to my parents. It was very naïve of me, in hindsight. They started by determining what precisely I could do. It was chiefly my mind they were interested in, so they had me speed-reading, solving complicated equations in my head, memorising extensive amounts of text or numbers, and the like. I actually learnt quite a bit about myself in the process. If things had gone no farther than that, it wouldn't have been so bad. But they did go farther." "The 'doctors' moved on to attempting to figure out how I could do all this. Determining the structure and nature of my brain, and things like that. They performed experiments on me, of an increasingly invasive nature. I suppose they generally refrained from anaesthetising me because they feared that doing so might skew their results." Elly takes a deep breath. "My memory is generally flawless, but I remember surprisingly little of that time. There was just too much pain. I vaguely remember needles, and strange machines and devices, and…" She shakes her head. "They were rather less interested in my eyes, although at some point they did come up with special glasses impervious to the kind of light I could emit. But chiefly, as far as I know, they were interested in my brain. Or my mind, perhaps. The workings of both." She raises her head and looks at Emma Frost. "I was being taken to a different facility today for the reason I told you about." Elly doesn't relish the notion of repeating that reason, or any other part of what happened at the intersection, so she doesn't. "I hope this answers your questions, ma'am." She blinks. "Actually, there's one more thing. You said you couldn't read my mind. How telepathy works in the first place I've no idea, but I want you to know that it's not me doing anything. I'm not trying to shut you out." Mentioning this seems prudent to Elly, somehow. Not that she isn't secretly relieved that her mind can't be read, but then again, who wouldn't be? 
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May 11, 2015 05:47
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Elly So a distant star is what her mind looks like to a telepath. Strangely appropriate, and not terribly different from the way she perceives it, in a certain sense at least – if her mind is a star to Emma Frost, then Elly's consciousness surely constitutes the core of that star, her thoughts and memories like the ricocheting photons churned out by the ancient stellar furnace. It's a rather pleasing image, really, however metaphorical. "If you have a map, I can point out the route the van took today, ma'am," Elly offers on the subject of tracking down her captors. "I have a fairly good idea, I think." She then turns to look at Sarah, eyes widening a little with surprise. "Are you saying you managed to acquire the medical data they've been gathering on me all this time? I'd like a copy as well," she immediately says. "That way, these past eight months will have been good for something at least." Elly blinks, turning back to Ms Frost. "I do very much want to learn more about the scope and nature of my mutant abilities, you see; I just want to do so on my own terms. Besides, those people weren't ever going to share their findings with me in the first place." "I don't want to go home," she readily agrees with Emma Frost. "Or rather, there's no place I could call home any longer." No doubt it's in the best interests of both Elly and her parents if they stay out of each other's life forever from now on. With the headmistress's final question not addressed to her, Elly remains silent…but that's not to say she doesn't have an opinion on the subject. Or a preferred outcome in mind. It is all very thoroughly out of her hands, though, so she goes back to looking at her hands, or appearing to do so at any rate. MMAgCh fucked around with this message at 21:48 on May 15, 2015 |
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May 15, 2015 05:49
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Elly Elly raises her head to smile at Regina and the others. "I'd be happy to stay here for the time being. If my experiences with you all so far are any indication, it'll be the best home I've ever had. And if there's a couch for me to sleep on, that'll do. I'm not picky. Blue is a quiet colour, anyway." She then shrugs her shoulders just the tiniest bit. "They'd do it in a sterile environment and call it a hyper-invasive tracheotomy or something like that, but I'm sure these people would be equally happy to cut open your throat without any hesitation, if they thought they stood to learn anything from it," Elly opines, giving Emma Frost what could be construed as an apologetic glance. "I don't advocate 'an eye for an eye' and the like, necessarily, but turning the other cheek isn't always the answer either. Not if you want to live." She blinks. "Better not to be in that kind of situation in the first place, if you can help it." The bright-eyed girl gives Sarah a grateful nod and a smile, making a mental note to ask her just where she found those notes when the time comes. Searching the back of the van for anything worthwhile must've been nothing short of horrendous – Elly isn't sure she could have forced herself to do it.
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May 18, 2015 01:08
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Elly "Yes, ma'am," Elly says. It's about as positive a response as she could've hoped for, and besides, there's really no point to objecting. "It's just that I'm not sure if I was the only mutant captive of these people. I never saw or heard any others, mind you, but even so." She blinks. "From the practised way they went about their business, I got the impression I wasn't the first one to be held there, at any rate." The thought that there might be someone else there right this instant, forced to suffer the same ordeal she went through…she can barely stand to even think about it. "Does this mean I'm not in any trouble for killing the men in the van?" Elly enquires. "Ignoring everything else that happened as a result, I still don't know how to feel about it," she then admits, giving her bracelet a twist. "On the one hand, I'm sorry I did it. I don't like the idea of taking a life, least of all in such a way. On the other hand, I had no idea at all I could do what I did to them, they had been experimenting on me for months, and they were taking me somewhere to be 'taken apart', so I'm not that sorry. Even if I should be, perhaps." "Speaking of getting used to the school, I don't suppose there are any brochures available?" There is absolutely no indication that she is joking.
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May 18, 2015 05:09
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Elly "I understand. Thank you, ma'am," she responds with a small smile for the headmistress. Emma Frost's words actually do reassure her, to a certain extent anyway. Ultimately, as she recognises well enough, coming to terms with what happened and what she did is something she must do on her own. Elly takes the brochure, flips through it once, and hands it back to Ms Frost, all within the span of about three seconds. "Thanks. I'll admit I was not sure what to expect, but tennis courts? My old school could barely even afford to fix its leaky gym roof." She blinks. "It was an informative read, at any rate, given the format. I'll do my best to settle in quickly, and hopefully won't be annoying my new housemates with too many questions. – My apologies," Elly adds, referring to the low but audible rumble her stomach just produced.
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May 19, 2015 03:22
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Elly "It's funny," Elly muses on the way to the Blues' dormitory, "you'd think that of all the ways that people like us have to give vent to our feelings, a little coarse language would be the least of anyone's worries." She briefly uncurls her fingers to glance at the prescription slip Beast wrote out for her. "Is there a pharmacy anywhere near this place?" Elly asks her housemates. "I'm going to need these painkillers here, for the burns around my eyes." They've already started itching, and hurting a little too. "A pair of crutches might come in handy as well; I don't know how long those wounds are going to take to heal." She looks at the cat-bearing visitor with polite curiosity, wondering about the presence of the animal in particular, but makes no move to introduce herself. Elly simply isn't very good with people – bonding with the Blues over sinister scientists pointing guns at them was one thing, and the adults she has met so far all exuded reassuring authority of one kind or another, but a complete stranger? It's a little bit much. Especially given that the day's events have already left her somewhat under the weather.
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May 22, 2015 06:30
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Elly "A medi-shed," she repeats, her voice perfectly flat. In Elly's mind, a Venn diagram depicting the ideal interrelation of medi-anything and sheds involves absolutely zero overlap, but she supposes that the existence of the tennis courts means corners had to be cut somewhere. "I'd appreciate it, Sarah," she says out loud. "Doctor's orders, you know. And I'd rather limp along on my own using crutches than put any of you out supporting me like this any longer." Considering the cat for a moment, she blinks. "I won't. I'm not much of an animal person, anyway." Elly watches the colouration of the other girl's skin smoothly change as she talks to Anna, wondering all the while. Is there a pattern to it? Some progression that might be framed in mathematical terms, and thereby become predictable? It doesn't take her long at all to conclude that no, it's not that simple. Outside factors appear to affect the way her pigmentation (or equivalent biological mechanism) shifts, which makes it considerably more difficult to draw any reliable conclusions in a non-controlled environment. Still, it is a fascinating, sublimely colourful sight, especially to someone with the kind of acute vision Elly possesses. Which probably is why it takes her a few more seconds to reply to the Red girl at all. "Hi, Sam," she finally responds, giving no indication that Anna's joke rubbed her the wrong way. Or perhaps she simply missed it altogether. "I'm sorry, I was distracted. Yes, they are good people. Magnificent people, even." Even if she were otherwise inclined to elaborate, though, doing so would likely result in having to recount the day's events more or less, and Elly really doesn't feel up to that right now – which is why she doesn't, and says no more. It's not like she's made a very good impression like this, in any case. Yes, good luck with those exams! MMAgCh fucked around with this message at 02:21 on May 28, 2015 |
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May 28, 2015 02:15
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Elly "Yes, home," Elly echoes Crystal's earlier words. "I like it. It looks very nice." Not that it'd take a lot to make her feel this way after having spent the past thirty-three weeks in a tiny cell, no doubt, but she still seems to genuinely mean it.
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May 29, 2015 02:02
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Elly It's a very peaceful week for the newest student at Ms Frost's Home for Wayward Girls. With the headmistress being quite insistent that no, Elly is not going to be attending any classes until she has had time to heal, there's not much for her to actually do. Occasionally she spends a minute or two watching the other Blues as they do their homework; she flips through and absorbs their textbooks, as she does with just about any piece of writing she comes across; and after glancing at their laptops, she realises she'll need one with a customised display, her tremendously accelerated perception and speed of thought far outstripping their run-of-the-mill refresh rate. (This requires her to track down Professor Gloom's arachnoid attaché, who concurs that a custom laptop is required, and assures her that it will be ready by the time she'll need it for her classes. Or should that be 'which assures her'? Elly has no idea what the spider-like machine actually is.) In general, however, if Elly didn't ask her housemates a question or two every now and then about the finer points of day-to-day life at the school, it'd be easy to forget she's there at all – she simply is quiet like that. Most of the time, in any case, she's found out-of-doors – not to avoid the others' company but because closed spaces, even ones as nicely appointed as those comprising the Blue dorm, still make her feel uneasy. No matter how well Elly recognises rationally that she's no longer a prisoner (at least not in the way she was all those months), there's no denying that being alternately confined to a downright minuscule cell and strapped tightly to a variety of chairs and examination tables has left its marks on her, even if she's only partially aware of this most of the time. That peculiar sense of the walls and ceiling starting to close in on her, that feeling of something in her chest constricting, of each breath yielding less precious air for every minute she lingers indoors…none of it is rational, of course, but that doesn't make these sensations any less real to her, or the escape into the boundless outdoors any less liberating. The school's grounds are well-kept, fairly spacious, and really rather beautiful, she soon discovers. While everybody else is off to class Elly roams and explores, deriving considerable enjoyment from being able to walk around freely, or as freely as circumstances permit at any rate. Before long she even has a favourite tree, a venerable beech some distance away from the dorms and other buildings, perfect for sitting under and…not doing anything, really. For Elly, it is enough that she can smell the unadulterated, earthy scent of the green grounds around her, and feel the wind and sun on her skin, and watch the sky. Were anybody else around, that person might find it strange how Elly can sit beneath a tree for hours at a time doing, to all appearances, nothing – but she makes sure to venture outside during the day when, apart from the occasional roborat zipping past, there is nobody around. Elly finds herself perfectly alone, and she really is quite all right with this. When she raises her hand and brushes across her scalp, she can feel a fine fuzz starting to grow again among the scars, like grass slowly reclaiming a pockmarked battlefield. Her hair, though already cropped quite short at the time, had last been shaved two days prior to her escape; whether it'll ever come to be as thick and untameable as it used to be she cannot say, though Elly does hope so, because she rather misses it. Then there are the burns on the upper part of her face, which have been healing well enough, all things considered. Some moderate scarring does seem to be unavoidable: in addition to the raw, pitted skin around her eyes that is never going to be as smooth again as it once was, several streaks of glossy, discoloured tissue radiate outward from them as well, most prominently extending about two inches down her cheeks. Not that Elly particularly minds; compared to her luminescent eyes, which will forever cause her to stand out in any case, what are a few more scars? Recent events have left her with more than merely physical scars, of course. With her intellect usually superseding her more human side, she essentially copes by repressing the emotions in question and almost instinctively avoiding any situations that could cause them to surface. This is most evident by her continued, if polite refusal to go visit Ms Caida – the other Blues may well hold it against her, but Elly is distinctly aware that her meeting the woman she nearly killed would be more than just awkward. It would most likely cause a torrent of memories and emotions to surface that she has no wish to revisit, and possibly cause a breakdown that would make her behaviour on the day of her escape seem positively calm and collected. Is Elly aware that eventually she will have to come face to face with her own House Mother? Does she know that every day she keeps avoiding her might irremediably damage their future relationship? The girl probably does, if only on a subconscious level, but for someone as bright as she is, Elly is almost perversely good at closing her mind to an unpleasant truth. And ultimately, on afternoons like this, able to sit in silence underneath the beech without a single other soul around, she is truly at peace for the first time in a long, long while, and could not care less. ~ Gym class in general is something Elly has no particularly strong opinion on either way. Though never athletically inclined, being reasonably limber and quick on her feet at least meant she rarely was the last one picked when teams needed to be formed for some game or another, and standing fairly tall for a girl gave her an advantage when it came to basketball in particular. She had no particular expectations when it came to this gym class, although hearing some of her housemates allude to it in less than joyful tones was, perhaps, a cause for some mild concern. However bad it might be, though, it could not possibly measure up to the past eight months of Elly's life, which is why she isn't worried. Not yet. In any case, for the time being gym class itself takes a backseat to getting to know the Reds. Not exactly being a people person, Elly is tempted to leave them be at first, but in this instance she does second-guess herself. Isn't this, after all, as close to a fresh start as she's ever going to get in her life? The slate wiped clean, and among people who are overall more like her than anyone she knew before to boot? It is an intriguing notion. To say nothing of the fact that if she is going to be staying here for the foreseeable future, getting to know the other students surely can only prove beneficial in the long run. Which is why Elly does walk over to the assembled Reds and introduce herself, even if that first step takes some effort. On the way there, she wonders. This being a school for young mutant delinquents, it seems to follow that these girls all did something that resulted in their being here. (As did her own housemates, of course, though how forthcoming they are on the subject is a different question.) What could that something have been? Was it merely a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Much like the Blues, they don't look remotely like criminals, at least as far as Elly's idea of criminals is concerned. Perhaps the winged girl with the raptor eyes had done an inadvisable flyby over the White House? The one with the fiery aura might've set something alight in a careless moment. And after watching Sam handle those kittens (both real and stuffed), it's just about impossible to think of her as anything other than positively harmless, really. It is, at any rate, intriguing to speculate a little like this, though Elly already has accepted that she'll most likely never know. Certainly she's not going to ask, because even she knows that would be quite rude and nosy! Instead, the Reds get a "hi, I'm Elly" from her, along with her best attempt at a friendly smile. "It's nice to meet you all," she says, letting her gaze sweep across them. "Until recently I'd never met another mutant, not knowingly at least. It's very intriguing how diverse we all appear to be!" she adds, in an honest if feeble attempt to break the ice. Laying eyes on Blunt Trauma for the first time elicits a blink from Elly, in part because the woman is a very imposing sight by anyone's standards and in part because Elly expected her to be more…intimidating after hearing what her fellow Blues had to say on the subject. "I take it this is out of the ordinary somehow?" the mutant girl asks no one in particular when the teacher is in her office again, the expression on everybody else's face having tipped even her off. "Still, I don't think she's going to ask us twice." Elly glances from Red girl to Red girl; perhaps one of them will make the first move? If none does, she'll approach the one with the dyed hair, unconsciously giving her bracelet a twist as she walks. "Gabrielle? Would you like to pair up with me?" Elly asks, giving the not-quite-burning Red a small smile. She does, however, unconsciously keep her distance a little, even beyond what the concept of personal space already deems proper – she's not afraid of fire or heat, but it can't be said just yet that she's thoroughly comfortable with them again after all that has happened, either. MMAgCh fucked around with this message at 08:20 on Jun 13, 2015 |
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Jun 13, 2015 07:18
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Elly "That's a rather resigned attitude you have, Gabrielle," Elly remarks as calmly as usual. Of course the Red girl presumably has a much better idea of what gym class tends to be like than the new Blue does at this time, but she still fails to see the point of being written off like that before she has even been allowed to give it her best shot, whatever "it" may be. She tilts her head to one side a little as she studies the innocuous-looking device in the teacher's hand. In spite of everything that was done to her, Elly doesn't recall ever being subjected to a nullifier – and judging from Ms Sanders's description, that's very much a good thing. Her powers didn't seem dangerous enough to warrant neutralising in this way, she figures. Even if that ultimately turned out to be a flawed assessment. When Blunt Trauma calls on Bo and Regina first, Elly glances sidelong at her partner. "Having a plan would be useful," she says, her unblinking eyes already on the towering mutant and her would-be "captors" in front of them again. At the very least, they can learn from the speedster and saurian girl's success or failure. I'm not opposed to an OOC thread, I guess!
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Jun 20, 2015 20:07
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Elly "We're unlikely to succeed today," she agrees quietly. "But that's the point. It's a learning experience. Everyone has to start somewhere." Falling silent, Elly then watches the two girls' assault on their gym teacher. With the way her eyesight and brain work, what she sees is like a tableau of curiously measured violence unfolding largely in slow motion – to Elly, Bo moves as quickly as one ordinary human appears to move to another, but Regina's attack and Ms Sanders's immediate riposte both play out such that she can leisurely watch every single inch of movement either of them makes. And what she sees…it's a kind of beauty, really. The dinosaur mutant is all unbridled, animal grace, her human side giving way to the reptilian instincts that clearly are so much closer to the surface in her than they are in other people; in that moment, her intent and its execution seem primal and unembellished, born of the same simple need to kill and eat felt by her saurian kin millions of years ago. The way their gym teacher responds to Regina's lunge, though, is something else still. It's just as instinctive in a way, without a hint of hesitation, without any sign that she has to think about what she is doing. But where Elly's housemate seemed to eschew finesse in favour of raw force, Blunt Trauma's moves are sparse, the picture of focus and efficiency, and seem to have comparatively little to do with physical strength; certainly they don't require any mutant powers to execute. To Elly, it's clarity of thought made physical reality. (Not that she'd expect this to make sense to anyone else.) But more importantly, it's an answer, something that just might resolve the worry that has been eating away at her ever since her escape: the question of what she could've done that day to avoid killing anyone, to avoid injuring any bystanders. That concern has been with her all week, rarely dwelt on consciously and not spoken of to anybody, actively repressed at worst lest that still-fresh wound be ripped wide open again – but now, watching a de-powered Ms Sanders dispatch two attackers with minimal effort and great precision, using nothing but her bare hands, it occurs to Elly with great clarity that this is what she should've been capable of, that it's what she must come to be capable of, going forward. She's never going to be at peace with herself otherwise. "You might not, Gabrielle, but I want to be able to do what Miss Sanders just did," Elly murmurs. "If I had that kind of skill, I wouldn't have ruined the one day of freedom the others had earned. Everything that went wrong last week wouldn't have." There's just a slight waver in her voice as she says this, though the look she gives the grumpy goth is fairly intense. "If you're not game for this, that's fine by me. I'll give it a shot on my own if she lets me. If you are game, we ought to coordinate." She glances at Blunt Trauma while continuing to talk to her partner. "I don't know what exactly you can do with your fire, but try to keep her off-balance and as close to blind as possible. Without actually injuring her eyes or anything, mind you." Elly stares straight ahead for a few seconds after saying this, clearly somewhere else altogether. "Meanwhile, I'll move in and attempt to trip her up. As soon as she hits the ground, we both need to secure her arms behind her back." She blinks. "It's highly unlikely things will work out like this, of course. If she ends up on the ground at all, that'll be a decent start. And if she doesn't, at least I'll be more likely to get punched in the face than you." Hearing Jean and Anna talk about the effect the car crash had and continues to have on the winged Blue only strengthens Elly's resolve, in addition to causing that familiar feeling of unease to gently claw at her guts. She knows Anna doesn't blame her for what happened, and it's probably safe to assume the other Blues don't blame her either, but none of this changes how she feels about it all. Suddenly at a loss for words, Elly leans forward a little and tries to catch Anna's eye, giving her housemate a shy, half-smiling look meant to convey the emotions that have briefly taken hold of her – guilt, regret, and concern, with a hint of feeble encouragement. It's little, but it's all Elly can manage right now.
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Jun 29, 2015 06:46
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Elly "We're going to lose, yes. But that is fine with me," she softly tells Gabrielle. "Her stature is why it's important that we don't allow her to stand still and dig in her heels. If she has to keep moving because of your fire in her face, her footing and balance can be more easily upset. Exploiting that will be my problem, but in principle it's just plain physics. Gravity can bring anything down." Not that Elly is highly enthusiastic about her odds of success, but the theory seems sound enough. Getting her sluggish body to correctly put it into practice, that's what she knows will take her a long time to work out. There's much to be said for trying to resolve conflicts in a non-violent manner, of course. Watching Rickie and Sarah do so (with varying degrees of success) causes Elly to think about it for a moment. Not that it's something you can just…do. You need a way with words; you need the right kind of leverage with which to back up said words; the circumstances have to be overall conducive to it; and the other person needs to be capable of being, as well as willing to be, reasoned with on some level. If the proverbial stars align and all goes well, you can talk a dangerous mutant down the way Rickie did. If all does not go well and disaster strikes, you get a Sarah-style incident. She starts forward when her fellow Blue goes flying, frustrated by the lag between seeing something happen and being able to physically react to it. At least Alice manages to cushion Sarah's (and Ms Sanders's) landing in time using her curious powers – the gym teacher probably would've been fine either way, but her housemate could have been injured badly if she'd hit the floor at an awkward angle. With the otherwise reticent Red asking the same questions that are on Elly's mind, the newest member of Blue House hovers nearby, ready to give Sarah a hand if she wants to get up, or to check her over if she seems to be seriously hurt. Whatever just happened, it's strange. Elly knows by now that Sarah's mutant power involves manipulating or taking control of electronic devices with her mind, but that doesn't explain blasts of energy exploding from her hands. She supposes that's just the way it is with mutants: the full extent of their abilities seldom is readily apparent. It wasn't in her case until last week's events, after all.
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Jul 14, 2015 01:04
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Elly "Its frequency and wavelength, as well as the substantial kinetic energy imparted by the blast, suggest that it wasn't technically a laser at all but some other type of directed energy beam," Elly idly points out, then turns to look at the goth girl. "I know that. But after everything else that happened to me, getting my butt kicked a bit is a very minor concern." She blinks and nods. "I was thinking the same. Unsporting though it may be, Miss Sanders did mention isolating and hammering the weak link. Of course, she'll be expecting no less." Another blink. "Just give it your all. I'll figure something out." When she and Gabrielle are called forward, Elly gives the grumpy goth a light encouraging pat on the shoulder (fiery aura permitting). Clenching and unclenching her fists, paying close attention to every step in an attempt to get a better feeling for how much her body lags behind her mind, she locks eyes with Blunt Trauma. "My name is Elly," she says, with what might be the faintest hint of defiance in her voice. Perhaps some tiny part of her, the one that isn't coolly collected and all intellect all the time, has had enough of that kind of appellation by now, enough of being some nameless mutant girl who is referred to as if she weren't even present. Or perhaps she simply felt the need to clarify. At any rate, if it was supposed to be some sort of taunt to unsettle Elly, it doesn't work. She takes a leaf out of Bo and Regina's book to a degree, calmly circling around Ms Sanders a little so the teacher can't easily keep an eye on both Elly and Gabrielle at the same time. Of course, once the Red starts doing her flame-y thing – whatever shape exactly that'll take –, there is bound to be an opening of some sort, even if only for a moment. And that's what Elly intends to capitalise on. She knows she needs to keep low, move quickly, look for any flaws in Blunt Trauma's footing. She should pay attention to the teacher's wounded limb, but mustn't let it blind her to everything else; to the strength and reach of those arms, to the burst of speed and power the mutant's legs can put out, de-powered or not. There are many factors to take into account, and if her body were anywhere near as responsive as her mind, Elly is confident she could handle this situation fairly easily. But it isn't and she can't, so she'll have to do the best she can and hope it'll suffice. Should everything works out in her favour and Miss Sanders be brought down, whether by way of a solid blow to her wounded leg or thanks to a bodily shove turning a slight imbalance into an all-out tumble, Elly intends to make use of the damage already done by Sarah. Gabrielle had the right idea, of course. The scarred mutant knows she doesn't have anywhere near the strength to put Blunt Trauma into any kind of restraining hold, but surely the skin beneath that patch of charred costume has to be sore at the very least, perhaps even a little burnt. And as she came to experience first-hand very recently, it's that burnt skin is extremely sensitive. Some punches to the injured area are as close as Elly is going to get to putting the dangerous fugitive in a state suitable for capture – as unlikely as she deems it that her efforts will even let her get that far. To say nothing of the fact that a significant part of her own face is an ever-so-slowly healing burn wound, of course. But Elly has made her peace with that. Spending a hero point to gain the benefit of the Improved Trip advantage until the end of Elly's next turn! Also using extra effort for a +2 bonus to the initial close attack check, for a grand total of…+2. On a success, making an opposed check against Blunt Trauma's Acrobatics using Elly's Athletics (-1  ) to trip her. Even if Elly loses, BT can't counter-trip her thanks to the advantage.
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Jul 19, 2015 01:59
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Elly Watching the gym teacher's face contort into a snarl born of pain and rage alike, Elly slowly backs away – clearly she hasn't entirely ruled out the possibility of Blunt Trauma going for a parting punch in spite of having "surrendered". Not that Elly is in any shape to put up a fight in any case. Her efforts to bring down their target, fairly minor though they were in the grand scheme of things, have left her visibly exhausted, and she can already tell she'll be sporting numerous bruises as a result of testing her opponent's defences. Her hands, too, feel somewhat sore; Ms Sanders may not possess an adamantium-coated skeleton, but even getting that one punch in felt like delivering a blow to a brick wall. "Well done. I'm sorry about your house points, though," Elly softly tells Gabrielle as she moves to stand next to the goth again. She doesn't look very happy at all, though whether this is solely because her partner's successful diversion cost Red House some points is anyone's guess. "We do have Alice and Sarah to thank for laying the groundwork, of course," she adds, briefly but appreciatively nodding in the direction of the two girls. The scarred mutant nods again at Blunt Trauma's words. Is she talking about not calling a teacher a bitch, or about the importance of teamwork for taking down a superior opponent? Or both, perhaps? Either point is perfectly well understood by Elly, so she says nothing and simply nods. As verbose as she tends to be otherwise, it seems something has put her into a rather taciturn mood.
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Jul 25, 2015 06:05
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Elly "Thanks, Gabrielle," she tells the Red girl after looking at her in silence for a moment, and gives her one of the more heartfelt smiles she's managed to muster in recent times. That kind of sincere recognition has been all but absent from her life ever since her mutation manifested itself, and while she struggles to show it, Elly is genuinely touched and pleased by Gabrielle's praise. (Regardless of the mildly macabre subject matter.) Whether she would've told the goth as much if Alice hadn't whisked her away is a different matter altogether, though. Elly briefly raises her hand as well after Anna has asked her question. It's a good question, too, and one she's curious to hear the answer to, if one is forthcoming. "There's something I'd like to talk to you about in private, ma'am, if that's all right."
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Jul 30, 2015 06:51
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Elly Giving the Reds a small wave just in case they're gone by the time she's done talking to Blunt Trauma, Elly follows her into the staff room. It's not particularly big, but then again the teacher's superhuman stature must make any enclosed space smaller than a gym seem cramped. Which in turn isn't doing Elly's claustrophobia any favours, but she does her best to ignore the awful feeling. Only a few more minutes and she'll be outside again, after all. Perching on the edge of the seat and toying with her bracelet, she just nods wordlessly in response to the compliment, such as it is. As much as she appreciated the sentiment when it came from Gabrielle, somehow it's different hearing it from the very person on whom she inflicted all that pain. Suddenly it's nothing to feel positive about, let alone be proud of. Even if it's the equivalent of earning a fairly decent grade; even if she only did what she was supposed to. Elly stares at her feet for a while. At the blood spatters staining her sneaker. "I wanted to say I'm sorry I hurt you, ma'am," she finally speaks up, looking at Ms Sanders. "What we attempted to do worked, obviously, and I'm satisfied it did, but I still don't like it." She gives her bracelet another twist. "I hate it when people get hurt. And even more so if I'm the one doing the hurting. I never liked it, of course, but it didn't truly sink in until today, in spite of what happened last week. Until I actually did it, knowingly and purposefully." Elly pauses, looking down as she shifts her foot a little to frown at the dried blood from a slightly different angle. "Maybe it's because I've been subjected to so much pain myself all these months. I wouldn't wish even a fraction of it on anybody. No matter who they are." She raises her eyes to meet Blunt Trauma's once more. "I just wanted you to know. For whatever it's worth." The bright-eyed mutant then sits up a little straighter. "That said, I do want to learn how to fight. I have to." She blinks, and a hint of agitation breaks through her calm demeanour again. "You know what happened. What I did. I've never regretted anything so much in my life. I haven't really talked about it to anyone, but it'd be fair to say it's all been eating away at me, as much as I've tried to pretend otherwise, to forget. But forgetting is something I'm terrible at." Elly swallows and shakes her head. "The closest I can get to making things right is learning to handle myself the way you do. If I could do that I wouldn't have killed three people, I wouldn't have hurt our – my – I wouldn't have badly hurt Miss Caida, I wouldn't have made a mess of the others' one day away from this place…" She trails off, taking a few deep breaths instead. "And it's like you said: there's no telling when that kind of situation will arise again. When someone is in danger and needs to be defended, whoever they might be. Me or other people. Mutants or not. If that day comes, I have to be ready for it." Having stared mostly at her hands or the floor these past minutes, Elly now looks at Miss Sanders again. "You'll be teaching us how to fight in gym class, but I'd like to know if there's anything I can do beyond that. Homework for the rest of my classes should take up a negligible amount of time, so putting in a couple of extra hours every day won't be an issue. No matter how gruelling these hours turn out to be." She blinks, giving Blunt Trauma an almost pleading look. "It'd mean a lot to me if you could help me, ma'am."
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Jul 31, 2015 04:20
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Elly "I don't know. Schadenfreude is one thing, but you had your leg skewered. Your chest burnt. And I saw the look on your face when I hit you, ma'am. I'd hope no one would feel vindictive enough to be pleased by any of that. I hope I wouldn't," she adds after a beat. "I thought about it, and that kind of changed perspective may be the one positive thing to take away from my ordeal," Elly then agrees. "It must've been good for something, right? For more than just eight months' worth of pain and scars." "I'll be turning seventeen in precisely nine weeks," Elly responds. It's difficult to picture Ms Sanders at that age, though. There's something curiously counter-intuitive about the fact that adults used to be children once themselves. Doubly so with teachers; triply so with Blunt Trauma, who looks like she must have sprung fully grown and armed from the brow of some awesome, warlike deity. "Was it self-defence?" Elly can't help but ask when Ms Sanders brings up her own first killing. (The "first" is noted, but goes unremarked upon.) It's strangely reassuring to Elly that the teacher also had a person's death on her conscience at such a young age, that she knows what that feels like. But at the same time she experiences a sharp pang of pity and sympathy for the woman before her. Hardened though she may be now, the young Heather Sanders clearly wasn't, and Elly finds it all too easy to believe that the experience did leave her utterly terrified. "I'm sorry you had to go through that," she says softly, genuinely. "No one should have to. Least of all at that age." The girl looks down at her bracelet. "I was scared too, when I found out what I actually did. I guess I still am. It's one of the reasons I didn't use my powers today. Or at all, since last week. I don't know if it's safe again. And I never meant to do what I did." "My memories of it are a blur," Elly then admits. "I somehow overloaded and hurt my eyes. I was as good as blind. Getting out of the van was as much as I could manage. Though I did hear the screams. And feel the heat. And smell the…" Trailing off, she slowly shakes her head before looking at Ms Sanders again. "I went to take a look afterwards, though. I simply had to know what I'd done." She falls silent for a moment. "The driver looked awful, but he still was recognisably a human being at least," Elly says in a quiet voice, looking through the teacher now rather than at her. "I can still see the men who rode with me in the back of the van clearly enough. What's left of them. I see them grinning at me, and staring. They don't have eyes any more, but they're staring at me all the same. And while the rest of them is ashen and charred, their teeth are very white." She says nothing more for a while. Talking to somebody about it doesn't feel as liberating as she might have hoped. "Those memories will be with us for the rest of our lives, won't they?" Elly finally asks, though her tone suggests she knows the answer already. Disregarding the aside about her House Mother, Elly nods with what seems to be some reluctance. "I usually am quite calm and collected. That's just the way my mind works. Not so much in situations like those, maybe. But I hope that's something I can work on as well. That and getting my body to respond as quickly as I can think." She blinks. "But you have a point. The best I can do is prepare for the worst-case scenario, and trust that it'll be enough. So I will do that." "I think it's important, knowing how to defend ourselves. Even if that knowledge may not necessarily be used as intended by everyone." She guesses this was one of Ms Frost's misgivings, anyway. It is a reform school after all. While the non-Blues Elly has met so far seemed perfectly all right, she doesn't doubt that there are a few less savoury individuals among the student body as well. "I don't want to be the one to throw the first punch. I don't want to have to throw any punches at all, if it can be helped. But sometimes it can't. And it's those occasions I need to be ready for." When Blunt Trauma has reached and announced her decision, Elly nods immediately. "I understand, ma'am. I don't expect it to be easy. That would defeat the point." She looks at her hands. "It can't be as bad as what I had to go through. And if it means I'll never again be as defenceless as I was, if it means I can make a real difference and maybe save a life at some point down the road…that'll be worth the bruises and aches and the fatigue." Elly's eyes meet the teacher's again, and she gives her a small smile. "Thank you for agreeing to help me, Miss Sanders. Giving up an hour and a half of your free time each day, five days a week. I don't think any of my old teachers would've done anything like that for me."
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Aug 3, 2015 03:01
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