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|---|---|
| Portrayed By | Fairuza Balk |
| Sex | Female |
| Status | Cooler than you |
| Ability | None |
| Age | 17 |
| Date of Birth | |
| Date of Death | |
| Occupation | Apprentice mercenary |
| Family | Jake |
| Significant Other(s) | AK-47 |
| First Appearance | |
| Last Appearance | |
Character summary.
Character History:
There was a time when I had the freedom of the city. When I had everything. When I had not a care in the world. Adolescence in America is supposed to be a time of self-indulgent freedom, learning what you need to know, playing at real life. Spreading your wings with the understanding that there's the safety of the nest beneath you. It was like that for me. Until the Bomb.
Until the Bomb. That's the dividing line, between then and now. Between the ghostly present and the future, and the peopled and vivid past. I grew up in Queens, in one of those populous, polyglot immigrant neighborhoods. My mother was born in Iran - she and her family were loyalists to the Shah, and fled the revolution. My father was born in New York. They met in college, at Columbia, before he went on to medical school. He ended up as head of the ER at one of New York's largest hospitals. We prospered, because of his hard work. I went to an exclusive parochial school, though he supported my mother in her insistence that I be raised knowing about Islam, as well. Mostly, then, I bucked against all the religious instruction. Because man, between the nuns and the imam, I shoulda been a saint. A very confused saint. But holy, nonetheless. That's why I speak both Farsi and Arabic fluently, though my Arabic is so textbook it makes people laugh. I'm understood, though.
So much for that. I was always stubborn. Fractious. A tomboy, to the despair of my poised and elegant mother. Though my father was secretly amused. Or not always so secretly. But it was a good childhood, and many, many people don't have even that. I never lacked. I was spoiled and cosseted, Daddy's little princess. Though they expected a lot of me, and made it plain they did. I was a good student, I can say that without boasting. Much. I loved reading, I still do, even though I don't have much time now. Not now that I'm den mother and Artful Dodger combined. Not that I teach them to steal. Not much. We do what we can,and legit donations only go so far in a city so wartorn.
Anyhow. My childhood. Dutiful daughter. Well, until I hit adolescence. And then all hell broke loose. Surrounded by so many, by the epitome of chaste virtue in the form of the Brides of Christ, by the demure and hijab'ed ladies of the mosque, I did my best to run wild. The cliches you hear about Catholic schoolgirls - true. Well, not all the way. Promiscuous and perverse sex, no. And not even so much with the chemicals. I've never let alcohol touch my lips - I'm at least that much of a Muslim. I used to smoke, a bit. Just cigarettes. Never tried anything heavy. Not with the high school gossip queens ready to tear down your rep like a cat with a new scratching post. But it was mostly in terms of dress, and running wild on my own in the city. Honestly, the way people talked you'd've thought I was a barbarian princess, brought in from the wilds of the Northlands. I skipped class, when I could. Sought out ever more dangerous and lonely parts of the city. I was actually into graffiti. I'm no great artist, not even in that school of downmarket art. No Banksy or Blec Le Rat. I had this illusion of invincibility. But I left my tag all over the city. I learned how to climb - not on distant rock faces, but on ruined buildings. We sought out the ruined, the condemned, the interstices of the city. The bridges trolls might live under, the rattling catacombs of the abandoned subway tunnels. I never though the day'd come when that knowledge could be put to practical use.
I had too much energy. I learned to run, too. Away from the cops, more than once, I'm happy to say. I never did get arrested. And then I found out about parkour, and it was perfect. No rules, but grace and adaptation. Using the city as your canvas. It's almost enough to make me wish I was Evolved. But I was ignorant of what might be coming.
The day the Bomb went off, I was on a field trip. I kid you not. Down to Washington DC with the rest of my class - the school was that small, and that exclusive, and we'd been promised that if we all passed our US History midterms, we'd get permission to be taken down there en masse and do the Mall. So I was blithely touring the Smithsonian when it happened. I wish I could say I were one of those psychics, and somehow knew. I didn't. I'm just ordinary, not a member of the Brotherhood of Mutants, or whatever the fuck they call it now.
The first I heard was when one of the teachers chaperoning us hurried up to one of the docents in the museum. They whispered together worriedly for a moment. We finished the tour and went back to the cheapass motel we were staying in. It was on the news. It hit right where my father worked. I remember falling to my knees on the cheap carpet, lifting my hands and wailing. It was like someone else inhabited my body, or like I was somehow three feet behind and to the left of my actual self. I remember cursing god, blaspheming as my teachers looked on and my classmates sobbed. It wasn't grief, it was burning fury. And then numbness.
We stayed in DC a few days longer than we'd originally meant to, as they tried to sort out if and when we should get home. But after a while, we went back. Some of the kids had surviving parents. Some of the lucky bitches hadn't lost anything. But me….my mom had gone to visit my father at work that day. The hospital was part of the glowing crater. And I'd no close kin. They sent me to my mom's parents, way upstate, and that didn't go well. Though they were liberal enough by the standards of the wingnut clerics who control Iran now, by American standards they're super-conservative. In our grief, we didn't comfort each other, but only wounded each other worse. So, eventually, I took off. I didn't have a plan, other than hiding out in the city.
It was a nightmare. Still is. I won't live to see it all healed, and I know it. But I learned to exist on the fringes. All the bullshit skills I learned as a girlscout, become real and necessary, as I picked through the rubble. I avoided the cops, lest they take me back to my grandparents. I did call them, now and then, when I had the money. To let them know I wasn't dead, too. My grandma'd send me money when she could. For what that was worth. I should leave. Head back upstate, try to pretend there's a normal life out there for me, somewhere. I….just can't bring myself to. Not when there are people worse off than me to help.
See, I've always been a sucker, a soft touch. And there are kids. Kids that don't dare take advantage of what little help the foster system can offer. Because they test you, and they register you, and they might as well brand you with a big scarlet E. That's no way to live. No matter what they can do, even kids with bizarre powers. So, I've got a few I try and take care of. Got a reasonably safe squat, cut a little deal with a local gang so mostly we go unnoticed. It's not much, but it's life, and the semblance of safety.
Evolved Human Ability:
As if.
Timeline:
The bomb - rocks fall, everyone dies.
Memorable Quotes:
- Sample.
- Sample.
Trivia and Notes:
- Sample.
- Sample.