Flicker

Background
Childhood

Isolde Anneke DeBoor was the bastard daughter of Gerhard Christiaan DeBoor and Amahle Odili, one of the maids who worked in his mansion. Fathered after a night of drunken debauchery with her mother, during a time of stress in his marriage to Hilde, his wife, it was pretty much destined that Isolde would have a harsh life. To be fair to Gerhard, he did do the honorable thing: he acknowledged his fatherhood, elevated Isolde's mother to a permanent guest of sorts, and accepted Isolde into the family as one of his children. Still, she was always a reminder to both her father and her step-mother of something that nobody really wanted to remember, and thus, as a rule, was an outsider in the household except for when she was in her mother's room.

Which lasted only until her mother died, of course, beaten to death by militant Zulus for "whoring" herself to a white man. With her mother's death, Isolde's alienation was complete. She was shunned by white society for being the embarrassing, half-black product of a drunken indiscretion. She was shunned by black society for being the offspring of a "whore" who "sullied herself" with a married white man.

It was almost inevitable she'd run away.

Youth on the Streets

Johannesburg is infamous for its gangs and violence. The poor little half-black bastard girl mixed right in like acid in oil. It was a miracle, in many ways, that Isolde survived the first year in the streets, given her naive upbringing and unfortunate heritage. Luckily for her she fell in with a pack of other mongrels, eventually, who all banded together in an "us against the world" stance, carving out a block of the fearsome Hillbrow neighborhood and defending it against all takers for years. Despite the sporadic incidents of extreme violence, however, Hillbrow would become a fond memory for Isolde. Her first true friends--ones who didn't care about her background. Her first love, at 14 hooking up with a 16 year old message runner (tragically killed less than a month later).

As one of said message runners, Isolde's aptitude for swift movement through cluttered terrain stems from this time, as does her affinity for bladed weapons for those inevitable times she'd have to break free.

Indeed, this is where Isolde's story would end, or soon afterward, were it not for her mutant talent breaking out spectacularly.

Discovery

Message running was Isolde's bread and butter. She was small. She was tough. She was incredibly agile. And she seemed to know no fear. If something needed delivery, she was one of the best to do it. This tended to get her into tight scrapes she got out of with machetes. It also tended to make enemies. Enemies who finally arranged an ambush she couldn't get out of.

They paid dearly for her. Money to arrange a betrayal. And bodies when she was finally cornered and started taking to slashing them to pieces. But there were too many and there was no escape. She was about to die, her chief opponent's blade coming down to sever her head from her body.

And then it all stopped.

The whole world froze. Except for her. She could, she found, just walk around and look at and touch everything. NOTHING solid (nor liquid, as she found out later) could move. Gases, however, strangely, were no problem. She was able to step away from where she was being held down, walk away from the place she was getting murdered, her droplets of blood freezing in mid-air as they dripped from her. Then the enormity of what was going on hit her and she panicked and ran. Straight over a counter and into a pile of cardboard boxes that were JUST on the other side of her limited range.

She blacked out hitting that barrier, inertia carrying her forward into the pile of boxes which collapsed and fell on her. Behind her the machete came down and partially severed two arms of people who'd been holding her down for the death stroke. The ensuing carnage masked her body's thud as it hit the ground. She spent 48 hours among those boxes before coming too, free and clear.

Ensuing weeks she spent figuring out the power, learning what it did and what its limitations were. She then came out as a mutant to the gang boss, Thando Van Deel, showing off her "teleportation" power.

This is where she was betrayed spectacularly a second time. Half-breed? Not a problem. Thando led a gang of half-breeds, after all, in a twisted family of sorts. Mutants, however, she had no time for. Except as a source of income.

Thando had heard tell of an outfit seeking out fresh young mutants and paying top dollar for their capture. She reached out and, sure enough, got a lot of money from Weapon X's agents in exchange for Isolde. The capture was almost anti-climactic: a bit of knockout drugs in some celebratory booze and Isolde was packaged and sent away, now property of the Weapon X program.

Weapon X

Isolde actually took to Weapon X. After an initial period of disorientation and resentment, she found her place among them, improving her combat skills, learning vehicular control skills, learning to resist interrogation and torture, and perfecting her control of her power (though she never revealed the true nature of them; something inside her told her to let them continue thinking she was merely a limited teleporter) and, over time, working herself into a position of trust that had her leading a seek/destroy team, typically dispatched to recover or destroy straying Weapon X subjects ("property"). She was a loyal (and very capable) soldier for them until...

There was a subject--code named "Poltergeist" who ran. As with Isolde, he was a perceived (by Isolde and her crew at least) as loyal and reliable, so his running came as a surprise. Isolde, by then code-named "Flicker", being the fastest mover in the group courtesy of her namesake power, elected to go after him. Tracking him proved childishly easy, almost as if he weren't even trying to avoid her. She finally found him, flickered next to him, grabbed him, and...

...Something happened. Something big. Something he was in the throes of and she only caught the edges of, but what she saw, the enormity of it, the enormity of the BETRAYAL she'd been not only the victim of, but a willing participant in staggered her. She released "Poltergeist" and stared at him as he himself recovered. Then, without any preamble, she shouted at him: "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR YOU FUCKING IDIOT! RUN! RUN BEFORE I CATCH YOU AGAIN!"

She returned to barracks, shaking inside, empty-handed, reporting a lost asset. Her punishment she took without complaint, but inside her own desire to escape burned. She started planning it, but this planning proved pointless when, to her surprise, she was rescued.

Escape to the Present

"Poltergeist" returned the favor. Isolde's intervention and misdirection led to his freedom and, in his mind, he owed her. So while she was slowly piecing together a plan to escape, he accelerated the time frame by freeing her in a daring assault that left the question open of whether either of them was even still alive. The pair--an unlikely partnership--fled and disappeared, linked by an intersecting path and a shared vision, working together or separately, as situations demand, in her case to atone for her pasts.

Personality
Stoic - While not formally educated in any meaningful way, Isolde's life experience has made her come independently to the conclusion that pain and pleasure both are neither goals to seek nor events to avoid. She is, in short, a natural Stoic and faces life's ups and downs with the kind of equinamity that would make a Buddhist proud (or jealous). Don't have enough money to meet rent this month? OK. Find shelter outdoors and use this as a learning point in managing funds, or as a driver toward working harder to earn. Meet a cute guy who's really good in bed and loves you for yourself? Great. Enjoy it while it lasts. Guy dumps you because you're too distant? Oh well. It was nice while it was there. Events that can break people, or make them gush with happiness, rarely drive her far from a central detached view of life where she is barely a participant, emotionally speaking.

Violent - It's not really her fault. She's faced violence from white South Africans for being half-black, from black South Africans for being half-white, and, of course, trained in further and more extreme violence under the loving, tender care of Weapon X. Isolde reaches for violence not necessarily as the first tool in her belt, but as a very close second or third. She's not afraid of using it and not afraid when it is used against her.

Guilty - Tristan's vision has impacted Isolde deeply, even to the point of shaking her stoic equanimity (something she'd never confess to). Knowing now what it is Weapon X stands for and what it does and what uses its charges are put to has shamed her for her previous, unquestioning support. She aims to make this right, but this is a long-term task that may not be possible to ever atone for.

Analytical - Isolde's stoicism makes her a good person to stand outside of a problem and look in to analyze it. It's helped her in assessing tactics, relationships, and even life decisions (like helping Tristan escape or escaping herself)

Fatalistic - Working hand in hand with her stoicism is her belief that she's going to have a short life ended in a brutal death. Isolde cannot, at this point, even comprehend the notion of living happily into old age.

Physical - Uneducated. Outcast. Abused. These are not words that, when applied to a person's background, result in someone chatty and thoughtful. Isolde is expressive, but tends to express with body language, facial expressions, and, situation-depending, in physical action. Words are kept to a minimum to express what is needed and no more. Thinking is related to tactics and strategic plans. Everything else is action.

Honest - Pathologically so. Isolde finds it very hard to lie. When she manages to force herself to she's very unconvincing. Lying by commission, that is. Lying by omission? Fair game. Isolde will never state an untruth. She will, however, without compunction withhold truth. Be careful of what, precisely, you are asking...

Logs

 * TBA