Post by Birdy on Aug 25, 2009 18:13:31 GMT -5
Player name: Rei
Contact Info: AIM - SchmooeyFoo
Basic Character Information
Type: Canon Adaptation
Full name: Bernice Adrian Chastane
Goes by: Birdy
Code name(s)/Alias(es): Birdy
Gender: Female
Age/Birth date: 17/December 4
Place of birth: Texas
Hometown: Arnette, Texas
Height: 5'0"
Weight: 124 lbs
Hair: Blonde
Eyes: Green
Education: Still in High School
Occupation: She works in her uncle's pawn shop.
Family: Jeremy "Jem" Whelan Chastane (Father)
Jeremy "Jem" Whelan Chastane Jr (Brother -- Deceased)
Elizabeth Ann Chastane (Mother)
William James Howe (Uncle)
Darla Ester Howe (Aunt)
Criminal record/citizenship: No known criminal record/US Citizen
Affiliation: Brotherhood
General Appearance: Since hitting puberty, the once tried and true tomboy, Birdy Chastane, took a few extra years before she even noticed that she'd become a lady. She is small and always has been, but is no stranger to labor, shown in her toned, muscular arms and legs, the calloussed state of her hands, and the light tan to her skin that seems to just appear at the first sign of warm temperatures. It used to be she’d never let her blonde hair grow past her shoulders when it was warm out, but in the latter part of her teens she’s come to an understanding with her hair and just lets it go. Her eyebrows are oddly angular and her lips are full but thin out to a tighter line around the corners of her mouth (sometimes forming what looks like a faux smirk if her head is turned just right) -- all of which, on a good day, leaves her looking a mite mischievous and calculating, even when all she might be doing is curling up with a good book. Coming into her own has made her less boney and more shapely, and she’s kind of come to appreciate that.
Birdy walks slow and confident, and when she is relaxed, it more than shows in her body language. She pays very little attention to proper posture or ladylike poses and will almost always opt for comfort over appearance. When she is angry, her stance tends to be very straight and steadfast, firm, as though doing that will somehow make her look bigger when she's dealing with an opponent.
Her style of dressing tends to be very casual -- jeans, men’s work shirts, tank tops, flannel, etc. But because she does see herself going to bigger and better places she’s got nicer, girlier things tucked into her closet for special occassions, the odd slinky black dress, skirts, nice shoes, etc. She wears the odd skirt often these days, but seems to try to offset the girly with combat boots and one of her dad’s old shirts.
Personality: Birdy’s a bit of a spitfire, and she always has been. She appears to have missed some major awkward phases in her teenage life, instead always seeming completely assured in her sense of self. Birdy is Birdy and appears to have been since the day she was born. Because of this and her diminutive size, Birdy has at least once in her life been compared to a Yorkie – tiny and opinionated. Most of her decisions seem less motivated by encouragement and pressure for acceptance of others and more because they are things she already wanted to do.
One thing Birdy has going for her is that thanks partly to her powers she’s fairly perceptive of people and generally pretty aware of what buttons she should be pushing when. She gets information from the source as she speaks to it, and when she’s being especially alert she can fashion her conversations with ease. This also makes her especially open to understanding the plights of people not herself, and it allows her to have fairly normal, even fulfilling relationships with people who would be seen as less than savory around normal folk.
The truth is, if she’s putting her mind to it, she feels like she could be friendly with anyone. The trouble, there, is she doesn’t always want to be friendly with someone. In fact, on a bad day, Birdy can be downright difficult; confident though she may be, while one might think that this would stop her from getting into stupid fights, it actually fuels it. She isn’t the sort who has something to prove; she just doesn’t factor in important things like height and weight differences when she’s picking a scrap. In fact, the bigger her opponent, the bigger she talks and the bigger mess she’s likely to get herself in. This isn’t a trend that comes just with fighting, either. Birdy has a habit of taking on tasks that might be too big for her in every factor of her life. Some things she figures she’ll work out along the way.
All this being said – not everything about Birdy’s personality revolves around her ego. Around people she likes, she can be a pistol. Around people she hates, she talks way bigger than her britches. But around family, she can be fairly generous. It’s not accurate to say that she’s motherly; she’s not, despite the need she has sometimes to look after her own. This can go as far as cooking for more than one, providing cold compress for a friend with a fever, or fixing things around the house. She does the latter the most, and this is a sure sign she has made herself at home somewhere, because she’ll fix things that don’t even need fixing if you let her. She doesn’t clean, but if it looks like some floors could use re-sanding, or a door squeaks too much when you open and shut it, or a doorway needs widening, she’s totally on it, by compulsion. This is something she gets from her father, her role model, but now that she lives away from him, she is for the first time feeling like she’s gone jumping without a safety net. Right now she lives with an aunt and uncle, but she has not bonded with them yet, so she will be looking for something she considers stable to make up for her losses. Because of recent events in her life, though, she is very likely to have a protective streak with certain people, though, maybe even worry about things she shouldn't have to worry about.
Despite her outward toughness, she’s not completely independent – sometimes she rather prefers to be the brains behind an operation and rely on bigger dogs to do the hard work, though she’d never admit it. It takes a certain type of guy to put up with this from her, because having one around just means she talks more crap than usual, and there’s only so many slugs a guy will take for a cute girl, unless he happens to like getting into fights in the first place. She’ll never admit that this was ever intended, however, and any help she receives from anyone will likely be returned with a snide “I was about to take care of it” from her.
Birdy doesn’t have a completely eclectic taste in music, but it’s not limited to a single style. She prefers classic rock and country over all else, but now and again she’ll shift into a little blues, as well. It depends upon whether something catches her ear, really. She also has a closeted love of bodice rippers (she thinks they’re hilarious) and scary movies. Her aunt and uncle forbid it, but she smokes, too, and prefers cigars over cigarettes.
As a Mutant, Birdy really is completely at ease with what she is. However, she doesn’t have much care for people that don’t understand, and could stand to have more sympathy for the people who respond to mutants with fear. Because of this she is generally wary of telling people she even has abilities, and tends to react a little protectively when other mutants she knows are not more careful about hiding themselves. Someone saying a coarse word about Mutants in general tends to make her immediately not like them, though, regardless of why they said it.
Powers: Birdy is a telepath with some mild control over radio impulses and electrical currents.
-She unconsciously perceives the surface thoughts and emotions of people around her, and can detect mental signatures in up to a 100 ft radius.
-She is capable of setting off coils of pain signals (or other sensations) in the brain to a very limited degree. This is about as effective as causing a five second cramp or an itch in the corner of the eye. It’s not exactly mind-blowingly powerful, but it makes cheating at football kind of amusing.
-She can insert suggestions into the minds of people around her, enabling her to increase her stealthiness by telling their brain they do not see her, or to not look for her at all. This has its levels -- she can’t convince a person they killed their parents but she can induce them to look the other way if she wants to sneak past without being noticed.
-She can disrupt radio waves and cut off radio communications.
-She is able to travel astrally, but more particularly has the ability to use what is termed as ‘the glow’ -- she enters the mind of a person and by astrally interacting with their worst memories and sorting them to the back of the person’s mind, she makes them calmer, more reasonable, at peace, etc. The effect also causes the two of them, temporarily, to experience heightened perception and reflexes, making the world around them move much slower to them for roughly half a minute for every second she is ‘glowing’.
Weaknesses: -Her ability to sense surface thoughts and emotions cannot be controlled or turned off at will. She hears them like she hears people talking.
-Inducing sensations cannot be done multiple times without giving her horrible feelings of vertigo. To avoid side-effects she’d be wise not to use this ability more than once a day at best.
-Her ability to reach deeper thoughts is only as powerful as her ‘victim’s psychic abilities are weak. A telepath of equal or greater strength could easily overpower her.
-Suggestion-insertion is not quite as powerful as it sounds, and again its effectiveness depends upon the mental powers of her opponent. She couldn’t walk right up to Jean Grey, wave her hand and go “these are not the droids you are looking for” and expect results.
-Radio-manipulation is severely under-trained. She must extend much effort to do it properly, and even then her successes are sloppy at best. Occurrences are more likely to happen in moments of heightened emotion and stress than by actually trying.
-When using ‘the glow’ or traveling astrally, Birdy is vulnerable to outside psychic attacks, and is vulnerable to whatever attacks or traumas she may be exposed to while traversing a person’s worst memories. If she is “hurt” on one of these trips, she will experience phantom sensation, muscle aches, etc in the area that was injured astrally. In truth, her body was not harmed, but the electrical impulses in her brain believe that she has been, so she is still in pain. Presumably, if she were to be killed in a memory, she might die in real life, or in the least be stricken comatose. A person that she is ‘glowing’ may also be open to the same vulnerabilities, and the memory she is interacting with runs the risk of being completely lost if she is killed or broken away by an external force.
Power Potential: With effort and eventual training she will be able to push past average mental blocks and read the deeper, more hidden thoughts of those around her. In time she will be able to disrupt signals sent by electrical and cellular devices as well. Her powers of suggestion insertion and sensation-inducing will eventually strengthen to the point that she will not be overexerted by using them.
History: Birdy Chastane came of age surrounded by the bulk of her family, on up to the last of her great grandparents, in the small town of Arnette, Texas. She is the youngest of two children, the other being her older brother, Jem Junior, who five years her senior. Life, there, was not free of its share of hardship, being a lower-middle income family, but with relatives close at hand, it was rare that they ever really struggled. As a little girl, Birdy seldom noticed the work her parents put in to see to it that she and her big brother were happy, nor did she notice nor understand that her parents were growing steadily apart. Most of her early years were spent trailing after Jem Junior, anyhow. Despite their age difference, it was rare that the two were separated outside of school, and her emulation of him effected everything, from her way of talking (though sometimes she never understood the bits of slang that he used, not until she was much older), to her manner of dress. Her days in grade school were spent in torn overalls and tanktops, with her hair cut short, dirt on her face and scabs on her knees. If her classmates did not see her in church (where her parents forced her to don a dress), and at school functions (same here), most of them would have assumed that her name was actually "Bernie" and considered her a boy.
Around the time of her ninth birthday, about a month after her parents were divorced, her brother, unbeknownst to her but known to their father, discovered that he was going through some unusual changes. The odd physical shifts that he was making were things that he and his father tried desperately to hide, but they managed to keep their secrets for only a few months before Birdy caught on. Jem Jr had grown sharper teeth, and his fingernails were harder too. On nights when there was a moon he’d disappear for hours at time, and Birdy only discovered there was something amiss when she stayed up to catch her father helping him clean blood off of his clothes in the garage. He’d been out hunting.
This was a secret that had to be kept from their mother, of course. Jem Jr dropped out of school and spent more and more time sleeping during the day.
These changes took their toll, as it effected the Chastane Family's home life in general. Birdy found herself spending more time around children her age, but not in the most positive of lights. Often, angry mothers of her classmates would come home complaining that Birdy was a trouble-maker and a hooligan (and once or twice were surprised to find that the little "boy" who beat on their precious angel was anything but. When Birdy wasn't at odds with her father for her problems in school, they got along rather well, and looking after Jem became something they did together. Around the same time that Jem Sr's protective sensibilities began to kick in over the young lady she was blooming into, Birdy became familiarized with a number of Jem's hobbies, namely car repair, hunting, and talking on the CB.
It's a strange coincidence that Birdy discovered she had a most unusual talent before she ever even realized she needed to start wearing a bra. She and her father began to notice that, in moments of extreme duress for her, the radio would cut out. For a while, it was simply considered strange. However, after the third or fourth time, they knew it could hardly be considered a funny accident. To Jem's relief, this discovery kept Birdy out and away from her hoodlum friends for a while, and the two of them tested the limits of this ability over a few weeks, keeping their findings secret from most everyone, especially her mother.
Jem Jr began to develop a temper, along with immense physical strength, and he became much harder to approach – less human – just before and just after an evening hunt when the moon was closest to fullness. Birdy and her father began to worry people might start to notice there being too many dead animals in the woods, so their solution was to begin tracking Jem at these times of the month and bring him in after he’d had a good run. Birdy noticed that Jem seemed a lot more calm on the nights that they hunted with him.
Much as she loved her brother, though, when he was at his worst, caring for him started to feel more and more like a chore, and she began to spend more time with people outside her family as a result of this. Coming into her teenage years, Birdy became a great deal more conscious of other people's reaction to her -- namely the responses of boys. It was not long before half-disgusted confusion gave way to realization, and she started to develop into less the scruffy tomboy and more into just a sporty girl. She began wearing makeup and more formfitting clothing; though sunday still seemed to be the only day anyone could get her into a skirt. Often she would adjust based on "impressions" she would get around certain boys she could stand to hang around with, free of slugging anyone. It was not until she was around fifteen years of age that she wasn't getting an "impression" so much as she was actually hearing the thoughts of the people around her. This discovery was another that she confided to her father and brother, and her father began to actively encourage she test and develop this ability like she had her previously discovered one. Not much time passed before she came to find that she could do more things with this "hearing thoughts" than she could while just messing with radio signals. One of these abilities that she eventually came to possess gave her the ability to calm her brother at his worst, and once she was less afraid to use it, to soothe the nightmares of her father, a veteran, who until then tended to have night terrors once or twice a month. This ability – which allowed her to walk in their minds and sort bad memories away – they eventually came to call “the glow”. Jem was easier to deal with, but she had nightmares for weeks after the first time she glowed her father.
Around this time, she began hanging around a boy from school by name of Miles Gimble, though most everyone that knew him just called him Mile. Birdy honestly thought it was lame, but he more than made up for the cheap handle with his attitude. Tall, muscular, and tough, he was more than impressive, to her, and with a hard glance, he kept the respect and revere of the gaggle of young men that followed him around. He was the first boy her age that she'd ever met who both drank and smoked -- the latter being a habit he introduced her to. Her father eventually caught her with a cigarrete in her mouth, and she was forbidden from hanging around Mile or any of his friends again. This, of course, didn't stop her; most of her time away from home and outside of school was spent running with his gang, being mostly harmless delinquents -- shoplifting and the like. It did not remain harmless for long, however.
During the early summer following her junior year of high school, Birdy was picked up by the police on her way home from a day spent hanging around Mile and his friends in the city dump, and they stayed out late into the night. Normally, Mile drove her most of the way, but after the heated argument that signaled her early departure, she was more than happy to go the distance by herself. Without a ride, it took a person about two hours to walk the distance between the dump and her father's house, and she was barely three blocks from her destination when a squad car pulled over beside her. She did not find out until she got to the station that Mile and his buddies were screwing around and caused a little trouble at an old gas station just off one of the back roads a mile or two from her father’s property. The clerk running the place was injured, in the hospital, but alive, and no one could find Mile, who fled with his buddies into the woods. Since she was normally hanging around with them, she had to be questioned, of course, to see especially if she knew where Mile had run off to. Her father picked her up from the police station, feeling none too happy with where he discovered his daughter had spent the night, especially since they were supposed to take Jem out. She found that part of his agitation came from the fact that Jem had taken off into the woods on his own, and without Birdy there to calm him, Jem had trouble tracking him.
Mile was found in the woods a day later and appeared as though he’d been mauled by a large animal, but he was alive. The trouble was, he claimed an animal had not attacked him, and in fact accused Jem Jr. The story of his savagery spread quickly, and it seemed that Mile’s own crimes were eclipsed at the possibility that someone in the town had become a monster. Rumors had gone around of similar cases – kids with weird abilities, freak talents, popping up all over the state, and the hysteria was quickly fanned.
There was only so much that could be done to protect Jem Jr, and most of it involved keeping him in the house. Birdy already knew that he’d done it well before she even had to ask him if he had. He told her, however, that he probably would have eaten the boy if he hadn’t smelled her on him. She really did not know how to react to that at the time. He might have been arrested, but when the police came to pick him up he escaped. Some of the townspeople, anticipating this, found him in the woods themselves and killed him.
Naturally, it was a couple weeks before Birdy could go back to school, and she never spoke to Mile or his friends again. All of them seemed to openly avoid her, now, waiting perhaps to see when her claws would start to show, too. This seemed to be guaranteed to happen, to some, and thankfully Birdy’s abilities and the general ignorance of her peers allowed her to deter anyone from knowing the truth about her powers. For the rest of the school year she was just the girl who had the freak monster brother.
As spring came in, talk from the townspeople had gotten steadily worse, and it seemed any child who showed some sort of excellence was a target for suspicion. It made the parents seem more distant from their children, if not more protective. Friendships divided among adults, and it just made the teenagers more hostile toward each other. Finally, in mid-July, Birdy’s father contacted his sister in New York, and Birdy found herself packing to move up and finish her junior and senior year there.
As much as she hated the idea of leaving home, and leaving her father, by now she was tired of Arnette and nearly everyone in it. She wanted to escape.
She moved in with her Aunt and Uncle, Darla and Jim Howe, but to this day doesn’t really know much about them. They really didn’t know how to reach out to her in a lot of ways, though on weekends and some evenings she worked in Jim’s pawn shop with him. They knew she was still half in mourning and did not question her much about the things that happened back home. Her plans involved getting her own apartment later in the year, once she turns 18 in December. Though she promised her Dad to keep her grades up, she’s found school in Bayville, New York, to be a little harder than back at home, and her desire to try quickly began to peter out. The only think keeping her from flunking out was that her Dad promised her that if she didn’t have any C’s around the time of her birthday he’ll send the deposit for her first place as a birthday gift.
Summer hit, and Birdy had little else to do besides work a few evenings a week in the pawn shop. The only incidences of note for a while largely involved her screwing up a number of local radio frequencies whenever she was in a poor mood. The feedback probably didn’t help matters any, though. Usually this happened when no one was in the store, but on one occasion it occurred when a group of scruffy teens she knew from the school were glancing around for a new TV. A month into summer vacation, however, a man came into the shop and was not looking for the usual. She considered it strange that he came in at all; he was an older man, but very well dressed, with a regal manner about him. He looked strictly like the sort that never bought “used”, to her. It became quickly clear that he had come to see her, however, and said to her with certainty that she was different from other people her age. He made mention of the radio incident, which was creepy enough, but when he rather casually dropped knowledge of her brother into the conversation, that was about all the incentive she needed before she told him to get the Hell out.
However, he didn’t leave, and demonstrated rather impressively his ability to move metal objects. This was enough to stop her calling the cops, at least, and he explained very calmly that he understood what she’d been put through before moving up here, and that he headed an organization that looked after the interests of their kind, mutants. She would be given some freedom to continue her schooling and live at home, unless she desired to take up residence away from her homo-inferior relatives, be further trained to an extent in the use of her powers without fear of prying eyes, and she would likewise have the chance to put her abilities to use in the protecting other mutants.
He also made it fairly clear that he would provide enough financial security that she would not have to keep working, but he assured her that it was up to her whether she continued or not.
Birdy took time to think about it, and when he came again she said she would join up, but it was up to him to convince her guardians that she should move out. He was even kind enough to spin some bullshit to them about some boarding home where teenagers on the verge of adulthood can learn self-sufficiency in a safe environment, continue to work and go to school, and all of that jazz. They bought into it when Birdy seemed like she really wanted to go, and since she was so close to moving out anyway, they saw no trouble in it – on the condition that she come to dinner every Sunday. She would also continue working weekends at the Pawn Shop during the school year, and on various days during the summer.
From then on, Birdy became an official member of the Brotherhood. The man who had recruited her, known only as Magneto, was eventually informed of the full range of her powers, and he began finding work for her to do – simple things, things that helped the Brotherhood work more stealthily on short missions and training exercises. But when she told Magneto about the ‘glow’ she did not feel particularly comfortable when he seemed more than interested in putting it to work. She’s stressed that it kind of messes her up, worse the more unstable a person is.
He soon introduced her to a newly joined member of the Brotherhood, a boy that was a year or two older than she, who evidenced very similar physical and power-related traits as her brother. He was called Victor Creed, and Magneto suggested she might use her abilities to keep his violent tendencies at bay.
She feels neither confident in her ability to do the job right nor morally gray enough to do such a thing if Creed doesn’t permit her to.
Other: In terms of skills and talents, Birdy knows her way around guns -- she hasn’t exactly got the most extensive collection, but she catches on quickly. The bigger, in fact, the more she likes it, and while she is rarely matched for marksmanship, you get the sense from looking at her that she’d be just as happy with a weapon that spread its devastation over a wider, more unspecified radius as with single, surgical shots. She’s a fairly skilled hunter, tracker, and trapper, and had a lot of practice on multiple forms of terrain. To be fair, though, she’s better trained to deal with bigger animals and would probably be mildly useless when it came to finding and catching rabbits or something equally tiny. She is also a good driver, able to handle even the large and clunkiest of machines like a professional getaway driver, if they run fast enough -- this comes largely thanks to her father, who with all his eccentricities believed she needed to know how to do NASCAR U-turns and drifting before less important things, like parallel parking and signaling. She speaks decent Spanish, can fix just about anything around the house if the right tools are handy (bandaids and bubblegum anyone?), and isn’t a horrible cook. She can play the guitar a little, but doesn’t know anything really fancy, and if you’re looking for someone who can carry a tune, you could do a lot worse.
Sample RP: It was official: Northern boys were damn stupid. Kids in general, yeah. But boys? Especially boys up here? Definitely. It was a wonder they could tie their own shoes.
Back in Arnette, they had things called “grab and go”s. The object of the game was to snatch as much junk from a convenience store as one could carry and run for it, and usually one step occurred within seconds of the other. It'd been Birdy's understanding of boys in general, growing up, that it was what they did to amuse themselves in that awkward adolescent phase that came between skinny dipping and lighting farts. Girls did not play this game because by this age they had the good sense to have purses, which made shoplifting much more subtle. By now, the native Texan had seen this game played many times, though usually she'd been standing back and laughing with everyone else when the damn fool that'd done it got caught and dragged back into the store by their ear.
Sure, it was rare if anybody ever got away with it, and there were plenty of ways to screw it up, but until that night, she'd never seen someone fuck it up so bad in so little time. The worst of it was that she had no idea anything was going down when it happened, so she didn't even get the chance to point and laugh properly.
There was a good reason for that part, though.
Birdy hadn't heard word of much of anything, now. Newly moved probably further north than she'd ever been in her life, she didn't have any real friends to speak of and hadn't really made an effort for that. That didn't bother her any; in fact, friendship was the furthest thing from her mind at this time, or rather the only friends she really cared to deal with were the ones she could burn down to the filters; she'd been considering spending her last dollar for a pack of smokes. They’d be cigarettes, and would be somewhat unsatisfying, but it was better than nothing. Her father would shoot her and set her aflame if he knew she went and wasted her money on another pack this week. He’d drive all the way up from Texas just to do it. That and the prospect of being utterly broke was the only thing that kept her sitting outside the corner gas station like a moron.
It was getting on to twilight -- funky time of day, if you asked her, and not in a good way either. The colors were always all wrong. She was used to the reds and golds of the sunsets back south; the cool purples and blues were more frequent up here -- mostly because it was rare if it ever stopped raining. It was chilly enough that she almost expected her breath to show on the air. It surprised her that it did not. These were the coldest September evenings of her life, and quite like the sudden approaching "grab and go", she had been unprepared for the weather as well and left home without a jacket hours ago. Now the workshirt she'd swiped from her dad before moving up here really wasn't cutting it, and she hugged it closed around her like it'd really help her feel any warmer.
Activity: I run a board of my own, plus I'm a graduate student and a facilitator for my college's Honors Program. So I have other stuff on my plate. But I tend to balance my time okay. You will still see me daily.
Contact Info: AIM - SchmooeyFoo
Basic Character Information
Type: Canon Adaptation
Full name: Bernice Adrian Chastane
Goes by: Birdy
Code name(s)/Alias(es): Birdy
Gender: Female
Age/Birth date: 17/December 4
Place of birth: Texas
Hometown: Arnette, Texas
Height: 5'0"
Weight: 124 lbs
Hair: Blonde
Eyes: Green
Education: Still in High School
Occupation: She works in her uncle's pawn shop.
Family: Jeremy "Jem" Whelan Chastane (Father)
Jeremy "Jem" Whelan Chastane Jr (Brother -- Deceased)
Elizabeth Ann Chastane (Mother)
William James Howe (Uncle)
Darla Ester Howe (Aunt)
Criminal record/citizenship: No known criminal record/US Citizen
Affiliation: Brotherhood
General Appearance: Since hitting puberty, the once tried and true tomboy, Birdy Chastane, took a few extra years before she even noticed that she'd become a lady. She is small and always has been, but is no stranger to labor, shown in her toned, muscular arms and legs, the calloussed state of her hands, and the light tan to her skin that seems to just appear at the first sign of warm temperatures. It used to be she’d never let her blonde hair grow past her shoulders when it was warm out, but in the latter part of her teens she’s come to an understanding with her hair and just lets it go. Her eyebrows are oddly angular and her lips are full but thin out to a tighter line around the corners of her mouth (sometimes forming what looks like a faux smirk if her head is turned just right) -- all of which, on a good day, leaves her looking a mite mischievous and calculating, even when all she might be doing is curling up with a good book. Coming into her own has made her less boney and more shapely, and she’s kind of come to appreciate that.
Birdy walks slow and confident, and when she is relaxed, it more than shows in her body language. She pays very little attention to proper posture or ladylike poses and will almost always opt for comfort over appearance. When she is angry, her stance tends to be very straight and steadfast, firm, as though doing that will somehow make her look bigger when she's dealing with an opponent.
Her style of dressing tends to be very casual -- jeans, men’s work shirts, tank tops, flannel, etc. But because she does see herself going to bigger and better places she’s got nicer, girlier things tucked into her closet for special occassions, the odd slinky black dress, skirts, nice shoes, etc. She wears the odd skirt often these days, but seems to try to offset the girly with combat boots and one of her dad’s old shirts.
Personality: Birdy’s a bit of a spitfire, and she always has been. She appears to have missed some major awkward phases in her teenage life, instead always seeming completely assured in her sense of self. Birdy is Birdy and appears to have been since the day she was born. Because of this and her diminutive size, Birdy has at least once in her life been compared to a Yorkie – tiny and opinionated. Most of her decisions seem less motivated by encouragement and pressure for acceptance of others and more because they are things she already wanted to do.
One thing Birdy has going for her is that thanks partly to her powers she’s fairly perceptive of people and generally pretty aware of what buttons she should be pushing when. She gets information from the source as she speaks to it, and when she’s being especially alert she can fashion her conversations with ease. This also makes her especially open to understanding the plights of people not herself, and it allows her to have fairly normal, even fulfilling relationships with people who would be seen as less than savory around normal folk.
The truth is, if she’s putting her mind to it, she feels like she could be friendly with anyone. The trouble, there, is she doesn’t always want to be friendly with someone. In fact, on a bad day, Birdy can be downright difficult; confident though she may be, while one might think that this would stop her from getting into stupid fights, it actually fuels it. She isn’t the sort who has something to prove; she just doesn’t factor in important things like height and weight differences when she’s picking a scrap. In fact, the bigger her opponent, the bigger she talks and the bigger mess she’s likely to get herself in. This isn’t a trend that comes just with fighting, either. Birdy has a habit of taking on tasks that might be too big for her in every factor of her life. Some things she figures she’ll work out along the way.
All this being said – not everything about Birdy’s personality revolves around her ego. Around people she likes, she can be a pistol. Around people she hates, she talks way bigger than her britches. But around family, she can be fairly generous. It’s not accurate to say that she’s motherly; she’s not, despite the need she has sometimes to look after her own. This can go as far as cooking for more than one, providing cold compress for a friend with a fever, or fixing things around the house. She does the latter the most, and this is a sure sign she has made herself at home somewhere, because she’ll fix things that don’t even need fixing if you let her. She doesn’t clean, but if it looks like some floors could use re-sanding, or a door squeaks too much when you open and shut it, or a doorway needs widening, she’s totally on it, by compulsion. This is something she gets from her father, her role model, but now that she lives away from him, she is for the first time feeling like she’s gone jumping without a safety net. Right now she lives with an aunt and uncle, but she has not bonded with them yet, so she will be looking for something she considers stable to make up for her losses. Because of recent events in her life, though, she is very likely to have a protective streak with certain people, though, maybe even worry about things she shouldn't have to worry about.
Despite her outward toughness, she’s not completely independent – sometimes she rather prefers to be the brains behind an operation and rely on bigger dogs to do the hard work, though she’d never admit it. It takes a certain type of guy to put up with this from her, because having one around just means she talks more crap than usual, and there’s only so many slugs a guy will take for a cute girl, unless he happens to like getting into fights in the first place. She’ll never admit that this was ever intended, however, and any help she receives from anyone will likely be returned with a snide “I was about to take care of it” from her.
Birdy doesn’t have a completely eclectic taste in music, but it’s not limited to a single style. She prefers classic rock and country over all else, but now and again she’ll shift into a little blues, as well. It depends upon whether something catches her ear, really. She also has a closeted love of bodice rippers (she thinks they’re hilarious) and scary movies. Her aunt and uncle forbid it, but she smokes, too, and prefers cigars over cigarettes.
As a Mutant, Birdy really is completely at ease with what she is. However, she doesn’t have much care for people that don’t understand, and could stand to have more sympathy for the people who respond to mutants with fear. Because of this she is generally wary of telling people she even has abilities, and tends to react a little protectively when other mutants she knows are not more careful about hiding themselves. Someone saying a coarse word about Mutants in general tends to make her immediately not like them, though, regardless of why they said it.
Powers: Birdy is a telepath with some mild control over radio impulses and electrical currents.
-She unconsciously perceives the surface thoughts and emotions of people around her, and can detect mental signatures in up to a 100 ft radius.
-She is capable of setting off coils of pain signals (or other sensations) in the brain to a very limited degree. This is about as effective as causing a five second cramp or an itch in the corner of the eye. It’s not exactly mind-blowingly powerful, but it makes cheating at football kind of amusing.
-She can insert suggestions into the minds of people around her, enabling her to increase her stealthiness by telling their brain they do not see her, or to not look for her at all. This has its levels -- she can’t convince a person they killed their parents but she can induce them to look the other way if she wants to sneak past without being noticed.
-She can disrupt radio waves and cut off radio communications.
-She is able to travel astrally, but more particularly has the ability to use what is termed as ‘the glow’ -- she enters the mind of a person and by astrally interacting with their worst memories and sorting them to the back of the person’s mind, she makes them calmer, more reasonable, at peace, etc. The effect also causes the two of them, temporarily, to experience heightened perception and reflexes, making the world around them move much slower to them for roughly half a minute for every second she is ‘glowing’.
Weaknesses: -Her ability to sense surface thoughts and emotions cannot be controlled or turned off at will. She hears them like she hears people talking.
-Inducing sensations cannot be done multiple times without giving her horrible feelings of vertigo. To avoid side-effects she’d be wise not to use this ability more than once a day at best.
-Her ability to reach deeper thoughts is only as powerful as her ‘victim’s psychic abilities are weak. A telepath of equal or greater strength could easily overpower her.
-Suggestion-insertion is not quite as powerful as it sounds, and again its effectiveness depends upon the mental powers of her opponent. She couldn’t walk right up to Jean Grey, wave her hand and go “these are not the droids you are looking for” and expect results.
-Radio-manipulation is severely under-trained. She must extend much effort to do it properly, and even then her successes are sloppy at best. Occurrences are more likely to happen in moments of heightened emotion and stress than by actually trying.
-When using ‘the glow’ or traveling astrally, Birdy is vulnerable to outside psychic attacks, and is vulnerable to whatever attacks or traumas she may be exposed to while traversing a person’s worst memories. If she is “hurt” on one of these trips, she will experience phantom sensation, muscle aches, etc in the area that was injured astrally. In truth, her body was not harmed, but the electrical impulses in her brain believe that she has been, so she is still in pain. Presumably, if she were to be killed in a memory, she might die in real life, or in the least be stricken comatose. A person that she is ‘glowing’ may also be open to the same vulnerabilities, and the memory she is interacting with runs the risk of being completely lost if she is killed or broken away by an external force.
Power Potential: With effort and eventual training she will be able to push past average mental blocks and read the deeper, more hidden thoughts of those around her. In time she will be able to disrupt signals sent by electrical and cellular devices as well. Her powers of suggestion insertion and sensation-inducing will eventually strengthen to the point that she will not be overexerted by using them.
History: Birdy Chastane came of age surrounded by the bulk of her family, on up to the last of her great grandparents, in the small town of Arnette, Texas. She is the youngest of two children, the other being her older brother, Jem Junior, who five years her senior. Life, there, was not free of its share of hardship, being a lower-middle income family, but with relatives close at hand, it was rare that they ever really struggled. As a little girl, Birdy seldom noticed the work her parents put in to see to it that she and her big brother were happy, nor did she notice nor understand that her parents were growing steadily apart. Most of her early years were spent trailing after Jem Junior, anyhow. Despite their age difference, it was rare that the two were separated outside of school, and her emulation of him effected everything, from her way of talking (though sometimes she never understood the bits of slang that he used, not until she was much older), to her manner of dress. Her days in grade school were spent in torn overalls and tanktops, with her hair cut short, dirt on her face and scabs on her knees. If her classmates did not see her in church (where her parents forced her to don a dress), and at school functions (same here), most of them would have assumed that her name was actually "Bernie" and considered her a boy.
Around the time of her ninth birthday, about a month after her parents were divorced, her brother, unbeknownst to her but known to their father, discovered that he was going through some unusual changes. The odd physical shifts that he was making were things that he and his father tried desperately to hide, but they managed to keep their secrets for only a few months before Birdy caught on. Jem Jr had grown sharper teeth, and his fingernails were harder too. On nights when there was a moon he’d disappear for hours at time, and Birdy only discovered there was something amiss when she stayed up to catch her father helping him clean blood off of his clothes in the garage. He’d been out hunting.
This was a secret that had to be kept from their mother, of course. Jem Jr dropped out of school and spent more and more time sleeping during the day.
These changes took their toll, as it effected the Chastane Family's home life in general. Birdy found herself spending more time around children her age, but not in the most positive of lights. Often, angry mothers of her classmates would come home complaining that Birdy was a trouble-maker and a hooligan (and once or twice were surprised to find that the little "boy" who beat on their precious angel was anything but. When Birdy wasn't at odds with her father for her problems in school, they got along rather well, and looking after Jem became something they did together. Around the same time that Jem Sr's protective sensibilities began to kick in over the young lady she was blooming into, Birdy became familiarized with a number of Jem's hobbies, namely car repair, hunting, and talking on the CB.
It's a strange coincidence that Birdy discovered she had a most unusual talent before she ever even realized she needed to start wearing a bra. She and her father began to notice that, in moments of extreme duress for her, the radio would cut out. For a while, it was simply considered strange. However, after the third or fourth time, they knew it could hardly be considered a funny accident. To Jem's relief, this discovery kept Birdy out and away from her hoodlum friends for a while, and the two of them tested the limits of this ability over a few weeks, keeping their findings secret from most everyone, especially her mother.
Jem Jr began to develop a temper, along with immense physical strength, and he became much harder to approach – less human – just before and just after an evening hunt when the moon was closest to fullness. Birdy and her father began to worry people might start to notice there being too many dead animals in the woods, so their solution was to begin tracking Jem at these times of the month and bring him in after he’d had a good run. Birdy noticed that Jem seemed a lot more calm on the nights that they hunted with him.
Much as she loved her brother, though, when he was at his worst, caring for him started to feel more and more like a chore, and she began to spend more time with people outside her family as a result of this. Coming into her teenage years, Birdy became a great deal more conscious of other people's reaction to her -- namely the responses of boys. It was not long before half-disgusted confusion gave way to realization, and she started to develop into less the scruffy tomboy and more into just a sporty girl. She began wearing makeup and more formfitting clothing; though sunday still seemed to be the only day anyone could get her into a skirt. Often she would adjust based on "impressions" she would get around certain boys she could stand to hang around with, free of slugging anyone. It was not until she was around fifteen years of age that she wasn't getting an "impression" so much as she was actually hearing the thoughts of the people around her. This discovery was another that she confided to her father and brother, and her father began to actively encourage she test and develop this ability like she had her previously discovered one. Not much time passed before she came to find that she could do more things with this "hearing thoughts" than she could while just messing with radio signals. One of these abilities that she eventually came to possess gave her the ability to calm her brother at his worst, and once she was less afraid to use it, to soothe the nightmares of her father, a veteran, who until then tended to have night terrors once or twice a month. This ability – which allowed her to walk in their minds and sort bad memories away – they eventually came to call “the glow”. Jem was easier to deal with, but she had nightmares for weeks after the first time she glowed her father.
Around this time, she began hanging around a boy from school by name of Miles Gimble, though most everyone that knew him just called him Mile. Birdy honestly thought it was lame, but he more than made up for the cheap handle with his attitude. Tall, muscular, and tough, he was more than impressive, to her, and with a hard glance, he kept the respect and revere of the gaggle of young men that followed him around. He was the first boy her age that she'd ever met who both drank and smoked -- the latter being a habit he introduced her to. Her father eventually caught her with a cigarrete in her mouth, and she was forbidden from hanging around Mile or any of his friends again. This, of course, didn't stop her; most of her time away from home and outside of school was spent running with his gang, being mostly harmless delinquents -- shoplifting and the like. It did not remain harmless for long, however.
During the early summer following her junior year of high school, Birdy was picked up by the police on her way home from a day spent hanging around Mile and his friends in the city dump, and they stayed out late into the night. Normally, Mile drove her most of the way, but after the heated argument that signaled her early departure, she was more than happy to go the distance by herself. Without a ride, it took a person about two hours to walk the distance between the dump and her father's house, and she was barely three blocks from her destination when a squad car pulled over beside her. She did not find out until she got to the station that Mile and his buddies were screwing around and caused a little trouble at an old gas station just off one of the back roads a mile or two from her father’s property. The clerk running the place was injured, in the hospital, but alive, and no one could find Mile, who fled with his buddies into the woods. Since she was normally hanging around with them, she had to be questioned, of course, to see especially if she knew where Mile had run off to. Her father picked her up from the police station, feeling none too happy with where he discovered his daughter had spent the night, especially since they were supposed to take Jem out. She found that part of his agitation came from the fact that Jem had taken off into the woods on his own, and without Birdy there to calm him, Jem had trouble tracking him.
Mile was found in the woods a day later and appeared as though he’d been mauled by a large animal, but he was alive. The trouble was, he claimed an animal had not attacked him, and in fact accused Jem Jr. The story of his savagery spread quickly, and it seemed that Mile’s own crimes were eclipsed at the possibility that someone in the town had become a monster. Rumors had gone around of similar cases – kids with weird abilities, freak talents, popping up all over the state, and the hysteria was quickly fanned.
There was only so much that could be done to protect Jem Jr, and most of it involved keeping him in the house. Birdy already knew that he’d done it well before she even had to ask him if he had. He told her, however, that he probably would have eaten the boy if he hadn’t smelled her on him. She really did not know how to react to that at the time. He might have been arrested, but when the police came to pick him up he escaped. Some of the townspeople, anticipating this, found him in the woods themselves and killed him.
Naturally, it was a couple weeks before Birdy could go back to school, and she never spoke to Mile or his friends again. All of them seemed to openly avoid her, now, waiting perhaps to see when her claws would start to show, too. This seemed to be guaranteed to happen, to some, and thankfully Birdy’s abilities and the general ignorance of her peers allowed her to deter anyone from knowing the truth about her powers. For the rest of the school year she was just the girl who had the freak monster brother.
As spring came in, talk from the townspeople had gotten steadily worse, and it seemed any child who showed some sort of excellence was a target for suspicion. It made the parents seem more distant from their children, if not more protective. Friendships divided among adults, and it just made the teenagers more hostile toward each other. Finally, in mid-July, Birdy’s father contacted his sister in New York, and Birdy found herself packing to move up and finish her junior and senior year there.
As much as she hated the idea of leaving home, and leaving her father, by now she was tired of Arnette and nearly everyone in it. She wanted to escape.
She moved in with her Aunt and Uncle, Darla and Jim Howe, but to this day doesn’t really know much about them. They really didn’t know how to reach out to her in a lot of ways, though on weekends and some evenings she worked in Jim’s pawn shop with him. They knew she was still half in mourning and did not question her much about the things that happened back home. Her plans involved getting her own apartment later in the year, once she turns 18 in December. Though she promised her Dad to keep her grades up, she’s found school in Bayville, New York, to be a little harder than back at home, and her desire to try quickly began to peter out. The only think keeping her from flunking out was that her Dad promised her that if she didn’t have any C’s around the time of her birthday he’ll send the deposit for her first place as a birthday gift.
Summer hit, and Birdy had little else to do besides work a few evenings a week in the pawn shop. The only incidences of note for a while largely involved her screwing up a number of local radio frequencies whenever she was in a poor mood. The feedback probably didn’t help matters any, though. Usually this happened when no one was in the store, but on one occasion it occurred when a group of scruffy teens she knew from the school were glancing around for a new TV. A month into summer vacation, however, a man came into the shop and was not looking for the usual. She considered it strange that he came in at all; he was an older man, but very well dressed, with a regal manner about him. He looked strictly like the sort that never bought “used”, to her. It became quickly clear that he had come to see her, however, and said to her with certainty that she was different from other people her age. He made mention of the radio incident, which was creepy enough, but when he rather casually dropped knowledge of her brother into the conversation, that was about all the incentive she needed before she told him to get the Hell out.
However, he didn’t leave, and demonstrated rather impressively his ability to move metal objects. This was enough to stop her calling the cops, at least, and he explained very calmly that he understood what she’d been put through before moving up here, and that he headed an organization that looked after the interests of their kind, mutants. She would be given some freedom to continue her schooling and live at home, unless she desired to take up residence away from her homo-inferior relatives, be further trained to an extent in the use of her powers without fear of prying eyes, and she would likewise have the chance to put her abilities to use in the protecting other mutants.
He also made it fairly clear that he would provide enough financial security that she would not have to keep working, but he assured her that it was up to her whether she continued or not.
Birdy took time to think about it, and when he came again she said she would join up, but it was up to him to convince her guardians that she should move out. He was even kind enough to spin some bullshit to them about some boarding home where teenagers on the verge of adulthood can learn self-sufficiency in a safe environment, continue to work and go to school, and all of that jazz. They bought into it when Birdy seemed like she really wanted to go, and since she was so close to moving out anyway, they saw no trouble in it – on the condition that she come to dinner every Sunday. She would also continue working weekends at the Pawn Shop during the school year, and on various days during the summer.
From then on, Birdy became an official member of the Brotherhood. The man who had recruited her, known only as Magneto, was eventually informed of the full range of her powers, and he began finding work for her to do – simple things, things that helped the Brotherhood work more stealthily on short missions and training exercises. But when she told Magneto about the ‘glow’ she did not feel particularly comfortable when he seemed more than interested in putting it to work. She’s stressed that it kind of messes her up, worse the more unstable a person is.
He soon introduced her to a newly joined member of the Brotherhood, a boy that was a year or two older than she, who evidenced very similar physical and power-related traits as her brother. He was called Victor Creed, and Magneto suggested she might use her abilities to keep his violent tendencies at bay.
She feels neither confident in her ability to do the job right nor morally gray enough to do such a thing if Creed doesn’t permit her to.
Other: In terms of skills and talents, Birdy knows her way around guns -- she hasn’t exactly got the most extensive collection, but she catches on quickly. The bigger, in fact, the more she likes it, and while she is rarely matched for marksmanship, you get the sense from looking at her that she’d be just as happy with a weapon that spread its devastation over a wider, more unspecified radius as with single, surgical shots. She’s a fairly skilled hunter, tracker, and trapper, and had a lot of practice on multiple forms of terrain. To be fair, though, she’s better trained to deal with bigger animals and would probably be mildly useless when it came to finding and catching rabbits or something equally tiny. She is also a good driver, able to handle even the large and clunkiest of machines like a professional getaway driver, if they run fast enough -- this comes largely thanks to her father, who with all his eccentricities believed she needed to know how to do NASCAR U-turns and drifting before less important things, like parallel parking and signaling. She speaks decent Spanish, can fix just about anything around the house if the right tools are handy (bandaids and bubblegum anyone?), and isn’t a horrible cook. She can play the guitar a little, but doesn’t know anything really fancy, and if you’re looking for someone who can carry a tune, you could do a lot worse.
Sample RP: It was official: Northern boys were damn stupid. Kids in general, yeah. But boys? Especially boys up here? Definitely. It was a wonder they could tie their own shoes.
Back in Arnette, they had things called “grab and go”s. The object of the game was to snatch as much junk from a convenience store as one could carry and run for it, and usually one step occurred within seconds of the other. It'd been Birdy's understanding of boys in general, growing up, that it was what they did to amuse themselves in that awkward adolescent phase that came between skinny dipping and lighting farts. Girls did not play this game because by this age they had the good sense to have purses, which made shoplifting much more subtle. By now, the native Texan had seen this game played many times, though usually she'd been standing back and laughing with everyone else when the damn fool that'd done it got caught and dragged back into the store by their ear.
Sure, it was rare if anybody ever got away with it, and there were plenty of ways to screw it up, but until that night, she'd never seen someone fuck it up so bad in so little time. The worst of it was that she had no idea anything was going down when it happened, so she didn't even get the chance to point and laugh properly.
There was a good reason for that part, though.
Birdy hadn't heard word of much of anything, now. Newly moved probably further north than she'd ever been in her life, she didn't have any real friends to speak of and hadn't really made an effort for that. That didn't bother her any; in fact, friendship was the furthest thing from her mind at this time, or rather the only friends she really cared to deal with were the ones she could burn down to the filters; she'd been considering spending her last dollar for a pack of smokes. They’d be cigarettes, and would be somewhat unsatisfying, but it was better than nothing. Her father would shoot her and set her aflame if he knew she went and wasted her money on another pack this week. He’d drive all the way up from Texas just to do it. That and the prospect of being utterly broke was the only thing that kept her sitting outside the corner gas station like a moron.
It was getting on to twilight -- funky time of day, if you asked her, and not in a good way either. The colors were always all wrong. She was used to the reds and golds of the sunsets back south; the cool purples and blues were more frequent up here -- mostly because it was rare if it ever stopped raining. It was chilly enough that she almost expected her breath to show on the air. It surprised her that it did not. These were the coldest September evenings of her life, and quite like the sudden approaching "grab and go", she had been unprepared for the weather as well and left home without a jacket hours ago. Now the workshirt she'd swiped from her dad before moving up here really wasn't cutting it, and she hugged it closed around her like it'd really help her feel any warmer.
Activity: I run a board of my own, plus I'm a graduate student and a facilitator for my college's Honors Program. So I have other stuff on my plate. But I tend to balance my time okay. You will still see me daily.