A Record of Seafarers
File #16 Oct 2021 05:07
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 Mayan El Sayed |
Amed Karim always knew he would have to leave someday. As a gay teenage boy living in Egypt in 1984, he knew that he would never be able to be himself without putting himself or his family in danger. So in the middle of the night, he slipped out into the dark and stowed away on a ship to America. He only left a letter to his older brother, congratulating him on his newborn daughter, explaining why he left, and begging him to never tell their parents. Then he began his life in a new land. Things were hard as an immigrant gay man in an unfamiliar country. But he soon fell in with the city’s queer scene, forming a new makeshift family to replace his old. He started calling himself Arthur, finding it helped him fit in with the culture.
Arthur was an intelligent, industrious young man, and found he had no trouble making friends or making a living. He earned enough money to send himself to college, first undergrad, then for his masters, and finally a doctorate. He earned US citizenship and became a successful surgeon, making a very good living. During his schooling he met a young man named Jefferson, or Jeff, Scott. They started out as bitter rivals, Jeff coming from a wealthy, white, American family and Arthur most assuredly not. But over the years as they miraculously went to the same colleges and then even worked at the same hospital, their heated rivalry blossomed into friendship, then into love.
Though the two couldn’t legally get married, they created a happy life together, using their combined income from their lucrative surgery practices, as well as Jeff’s inheritance, to rent a small penthouse in New York City. They made sure it had two bedrooms, however, for the two wouldn’t be alone. In 2000 they managed to hire a surrogate through an agency to carry the couple's child (they decided that Arthur would be the biological father, to Jeff’s parents’ dismay). And on December 15th, 2002, Mohsina Karim-Scott was born.
Mohsina grew up loved and doted on by her fathers. Who, although each spent a lot of time away due to the busy schedule of surgeons, always tried to make sure at least one of them was with her when she wasn’t at daycare or, later, school. But there were things her parents couldn’t protect her from, to avoid her feeling alienated or picked-on by her peers, her fathers encouraged her to go by Morgan outside of home, and to not talk about her two dads unless she had to. Still, though she was confronted by ugly discrimination more than a small child should ever have to, Morgan lived a relatively blessed life.
Her family got one small, but ultimately important, addition not long after she was born. Arthur was contacted by his estranged niece, Nadira, who had managed to find his information through the internet. She had run into some trouble back in Egypt, and Arthur was more than happy to help her. He called in some favors to grease the wheels in getting her a visa, and set her up in a small apartment in NYC which he graciously paid for until she found a job. He was glad to have some of his family back in his life, and he and his niece were soon close like he hadn’t been absent her whole life. Nadira, in turn, tried to pay her uncles back for their kindness by taking as much time she could to babysit the young Morgan so the two doctors could get back to working full-time.
Morgan’s world changed forever, like everyone else’s, in January of 2010. Luck had been on her side that fateful day: for while she was supposed to be in school, she had gotten a minor cold so her dads let her stay home. Unfortunately they both had surgeries scheduled that day that couldn’t wait; they considered calling Nadira to watch her, but she had work that day too…No matter, Morgan was old enough to be on her own for a few hours, and the poor girl didn’t seem inclined to get out of bed anytime soon anyway. They kissed her on the forehead, told her they’d be right back and to get some rest, and left. The flood hit not an hour later. While Morgan was safe in their high penthouse apartment, neither of her fathers ever came back.
The men hadn’t told Nadira that Morgan was to stay home that day, so she’d assumed that the little girl and her parents had all died. Thus did she only go to check the penthouse after a couple days had passed, to collect some mementos from her family. There she found Morgan hungry and terrified, but miraculously alive. Being most likely the only family Nadira had left alive, she vowed to take care of Morgan, that no harm would ever come to her. Nadira brought her back to the temporary hideout she’d been using, where she met other survivors that Nadira had collected. The start of a make-shift family that would only grow from that point on.
It was in this environment that Morgan grew up from a scared little girl to a rebellious teenager. She soon developed a complex for being in the shadow of her “perfect” cousin. Where Nadira was the hero everyone loved, who to Morgan seemed to succeed at everything she set her mind to, Morgan felt like a chronic fuck-up who was constantly being compared, negatively, to Nadira. She wasn’t a hero, or a leader, or had any special powers. So she did what every teenager with a chip on their shoulder does, she acted out. She heckled and needled people, she played pranks, she even stole on occasion. Often, Nadira had to bail her out, which only served to inflame her jealousy more. She mellowed quite a bit as she got older, but that chip on her shoulder and feeling of inadequacy never went away, and she’d developed a reputation as a troublemaker.
One queer thing that happened to her when she was a young teenager was when Nadira salvaged up some items from a sunken antique store to sell. Most of it didn’t interest the girl, but one thing stuck out to her. An old watch from the early 1900s, long since stopped working. Something about it drew her in a way she just couldn’t explain, it’s like it gave off, colors? Yet colors that didn’t appear to her eyes or anyone else's? She didn’t try to explain it to the others, only begged Nadira that she be allowed to keep the watch and that if Nadira found anything else like it that she would give it to her. Nadira was confused, but eager to see her cousin happy (and thinking the broken watch wouldn’t be worth much anyway) happily agreed. Thus did Morgan start amassing a collection of broken antique watches. Many of the watches Nadira brought back for her didn’t give off the “invisible colors”, but the ones that did, she hoarded, always keeping them with her lest they be stolen. Kendall, who was like an older brother to her, started calling her “Tiktok” for this odd compulsion she had. Little did they all know that this was actually an early manifestation of her power, the watches she was collecting had been painted with Radium glowing paint, and were still radioactive, which is what attracted her to them.
Her powers wouldn’t manifest completely until she was backed into a corner. Not long after she turned 18 the battle of the Pelagos happened, Sentinels vs Pirates with innocent civilians like Morgan caught in the middle. There had been rumors that something big was gonna go down, and out of an abundance of caution Nadira had ordered everyone to stay put. But it had been a couple days and supplies were starting to run a little low, and Morgan, being young and rash and eager to impress everyone, figured making a quick supply run in town by herself wouldn’t be the end of the world. What Nadira and Kendall didn’t know wouldn’t kill them, right? So she took a boat and went out to the main pelagos. It was then that the Sentinels made their move.
It was mayhem. The explosion of the Empire State Building had sent everyone into a panic. There were ship-to-ship battles between the buildings. Sentinels raided whatever they could, killing anyone they ran into. Morgan tried to make her way back from the shop to her boat, but found her way blocked by a large sentinel soldier, armed with a large club. She tried to juke him and get to her boat, but instead was knocked back by a blow to her face, causing the world to spin out of control. Everything was blurry, but she could see the hulking shape of her attacker approach her, heaving his weapon over his head. In a fit of desperate instinct and a will to live she found something deep inside of herself, something untapped, and pushed. All those invisible colors she felt but couldn’t understand brightened and collected in her outstretched palm, then blasted right into her attacker's face.
He reared back, the blast painfully burning his face and eyes, blinding him. But Morgan was too dazed and dizzy from her concussion to get onto her feet, let alone keep fighting or make a break for it. Luckily for her, Nadira had noticed her cousin’s, and the boat’s, absence and rushed for the Pelagos. By some miracle she had found her right as her attacker was recovering and reaching back for his club. Seeing her cousin injured so, she lashed out with a torrent of water, blasting the man back into the sea and dragging him down to his death. Then she spirited Morgan away to safety.
Morgan made a full recovery (though her nose is still a bit crooked to this day), and after coming to terms with her traumatic ordeal, she was overjoyed to finally have powers like her other family members. She immediately demanded Nadira, Kendall, and Roux train her. They tried to, with mixed success, because none of them could figure out what Morgan was even doing exactly. Until one of the other “Lost Boys”, a former physics major named Dimitri, figured out that Morgan was actually manipulating radiation. Morgan devoured all the information she could, which basically just amounted to what Dimitri could remember off the top of his head and whatever textbook she could find at the Library at the End of the World, about what the possibilities of her powers were. So far though, she hasn’t had much success in implementing any of what she’s learned. While her lack of progress frustrates her, she still practices to the point of exhaustion every day so that one day she can prove herself the equal of her loved ones, to everyone else, and to herself.
Ever since she was young, Morgan has had a chip on her shoulder. She’s always been under her cousin’s shadow. Nadira is a leader, a hero, and always seems to succeed. In comparison Morgan can piss people off, is a troublemaker, and is a bit of a fuck-up. More than anything she wants to be seen as an equal to her cousin. This was previously exacerbated by her jealousy over Nadira having a power and her not. She has calmed down a little bit as she’s gotten older, learning to manage her more negative traits a bit better, but she retains her reputation as, well, a little shit.
But, while she has a lot of jealousy and a rebellious streak towards her cousin and her “older siblings”, she is also extremely attached to them. She has some abandonment issues after losing both her parents at the age of 8, and is thus terrified of losing anyone else she loves. While she can be a little dense to the fact that she’s seriously upset someone, and too proud to admit it, she will try fervently to make it right out of fear of losing them. She can also be very caring and affectionate towards her loved ones when she wants to be (even if she can sometimes be overbearing or approach things the wrong way) such as when she stubbornly tried to comfort Kendall after he thought Roux had died, despite his attempts to push her away. If it came down to it, she’d defend any of them with her life (though I doubt they’d let her).
She’s brash, headstrong, and doesn’t tend to cave under pressure. Cowardice is not one of her faults; she isn’t afraid to fight (even though she rarely wins without help). She’s not usually intentionally mean, but she speaks her mind without filtering as much as she should. She loves deeply and fully, though sometimes she’s embarrassed to show it in that angsty-teenage way. Though she often fails, she doesn’t ever give up to a fault, even when she really should. She mourns her fathers still, but she isn’t broken by their loss.
She does have a trauma response to being all alone after being left by herself for a few days after the flood at only 8 years old. Without another human she trusts nearby, she becomes more anxious and easily frightened. In the worst cases this can lead to panic attacks. But even in milder cases it can hamper her judgement and focus. Only Kendall and Nadira really know about this, however, everyone else just thinks she’s kinda clingy.
Morgan has also inherited a bit of an academic streak from her fathers. She devours books from the Library in her spare time, usually textbooks. She’s probably one of the more well-read children of her generation after the flood. She downplays this as a useful skill, saying what she knows is “useful in theory, not in practice”.
A note on her name: Nadira is the only person who knows her birth name, and has been asked by Morgan never to use it (she just calls Morgan “Mo” instead). To her that was the name her fathers called her, and only her fathers. Mohsina died with them; Morgan survived. It’s no longer a matter of being ashamed of her birth name, or trying to avoid discrimination, she just views that part of her life as over.
Morgan has the ability to sense, manipulate, and control (but NOT create) Ionizing Radiation. Ionizing Radiation consists of subatomic particles or electromagnetic waves that have sufficient energy to ionize atoms or molecules by detaching electrons from them, which includes alpha particles, beta particles, gamma rays, X-rays, some ultraviolet light, and neutron radiation. She’s able to exhibit control at up to 30 feet. She can sense radiation as far as 100 feet away, being able to tell the type of radiation and the severity. At close range (within 10 feet) she’s able to “draw” radiation out of irradiated objects, causing them to release much more radiation in a short burst then they would normally. Doing this is very tiring, the more she draws out at once, the more she exhausts herself. After some practice she was able to do about three big bursts from her watches in a day before she collapsed from fatigue, but she’s attempting to improve her stamina.
Morgan’s most innate thoughtless use of her ability is a ‘radiation shield’ she keeps up subconsciously, blocking all dangerous amounts of radiation from getting within 30 feet of her. As a defense mechanism, she keeps this up whether or not she’s conscious. In lighter-irradiated areas, this has no effect on her, but in areas with higher levels of radiation, she will become fatigued from prolonged use. However, a concentrated burst of radiation could overwhelm her shield unless she was consciously bracing herself against it. Furthermore, she subconsciously manipulates any radiation she pulls into her shield around herself and her allies, to not cause them any harm.
She’s not very practiced with using her power in combat, but in practice she was able to gather the radiation within her field of influence and fire it as a concentrated pulse at a target. The effect of being hit by the pulse depends on the quantity and type of radiation available to her, but typically cause: radiation burns to biological matter at low levels; at mid-levels stronger radiation burns, heating matter, and possible severe radiation sickness; and at extreme levels of radiation non-resistant matter will be disintegrated on contact. She can also focus it into stationary barriers of radiation to inflict the effects of her pulse on all matter that passes through. This requires more continuous concentration than a pulse, however. Although the radiation she controls is itself invisible, when using either of these abilities the air the concentrated radiation passes through becomes ionized, softly glowing a blue-to-violet color (depending on the chemical makeup of the air), this glow can also be seens when she concentrates radiation for an attack, telegraphing it to a keen opponent.
Her powers have the potential to accomplish many more feats that she hasn’t yet achieved due to her inexperience, including but not necessarily limited to: creating EMPs, causing flashes of Cherenkov’s Radiation, creating images by ionizing the air, using her radiation sense like an X-ray machine to sense the matter around her, firing beams or lasers, and making constructs out of radiation.