X-Men

Gracia was born Anika Gratia Leorie in Bremen, Germany. She is the only child to Grete Morgan and Jonas Leorie. Grete came from a poor home; she was fifteen when she first started working, which was right after her father had passed away; and at her mother’s urging she married young, giving into proposal of one Jonas Leorie. Jonas was a man of large inheritance; however his family disowned him once he turned towards art and announced he would not be continuing in the family business. Still it seemed to work for a while. Grete gave birth to a healthy little girl and decided with Jonas to name her Anika. They lived in a small apartment above a night bar; Grete worked shifts as a maid in the nearby hospital and Jonas stayed at home, keeping watch over his baby daughter and drawing. His comic was actually quite popular and, though neither Grete nor Jonas earned much, it was enough; all they really needed was each other.

Life, unfortunately, has the tendency to turn sour; and Grete knew the precise moment when it all came spiralling down in a rush. She spent hours working only to come home to a crying child; and Anika demanded much attention, slowly feeding on Grete’s energy. Somewhere along the lines Jonas had begun losing grip on reality; he spent more time working on his comic and slowly lost himself inside a world he had made up in his head. He started drinking under the excuse that the alcohol helped him break through writer’s block, helped him get inside the comic and yelled that this was what earned them any money at all; his comic was the only thing keeping them warm and fed. The breaking point was his discovery of gamble and whores, as whatever was left of the kind and gentle man faded away in cheap whiskey. When Grete turned up on her mother’s doorstep with bruises and the crying two-year-old, she took her and Anika in, and worked hard to have Jonas never see them again.

Things never quite calmed for Grete and once it all weighed on her she simply broke. She quit work and began spending nights away, only to come home bathed in stench of tobacco and liquor. Her mother tried to reason with her, begged her to think of Anika; but one day Grete walked out the door and did not come back again. Unable to take care of the child, Grete’s mother turned to Jonas’s family. They took pity on the child and in turn promised to contact one of Jonas’s cousins who apparently had no children of his own. Klaus Leorie was kind enough to agree to take her in and took Anika along to the US where he lived with his wife, Gitta, when Anika was four. In a way, Klaus and Gitta were Anika’s miracle, a chance of new beginning. They took Anika’s middle name, changed the spelling slightly and began calling her Gracia. Since she was very young, she hardly remembers any of it; Anika is someone that never even existed, and Klaus and Gitta the only parents she would ever truly know.

Gracia was raised in the city of New Orleans; she was a pretty normal kid too, with problems that most normal kids, unfortunately, experience growing up. She was either too quiet or too skinny or too absent-minded for someone’s taste so she was either bullied or ignored. But her mother and father loved her so and she knew she would be fine so long as she had them.

The first show of any mutant symptoms was not until her teenage years. Gracia was playing with her dad’s cellular phone when the phone suddenly spoke to her. Alarmed, Gracia had shocked the phone so strongly she melted its circuits and ended hiding the phone in a drawer between her socks. She said nothing to her parents and, since there was no response when Gitta tried calling the broken phone, Klaus simply assumed he had lost it somewhere. However, after that incident Gracia began noticing, more and more, how electrical devices seemed to respond to her presence. She tried her best to suppress any thought of it and spent a year fearing what might happened if her parents ever found out what she could do.

She was fifteen when she accidentally sent a shock through a girl that was bothering her and shortly paralysed her. There was no escaping witnesses as it had happened right in the middle of the schoolyard and, soon enough, word of it reached Klaus and Gitta as well. Though they did not punish her or anything, Gracia could see both fear and disappointment in their eyes. She had cried herself to sleep that night, but was mostly angry by morning; and refused to go and register as a mutant until Klaus had to physically drag her to the nearest Mutant Control station. Though she defied her dad, the sight of men in uniform and sporting heavy guns frightened her; and though she sat in obedient silence while her bracelet was scanned and her information updated, inside she shook with anger that despite what her genes said, in reality she was powerless against the working system.

During her brief high school career Gracia had taken an elementary programming class and ended up getting herself kicked out of the school computer room. After that she stopped showing up at all; it didn’t matter, she had known immediately that hacking was it. Slow progress at first, she didn’t have the right tools, but time, patience and fucking around on the underground bulletin boards led her to wonder about other networks, secret systems and databanks that were supposed to be hidden but were actually right there, vibrating behind a thin membrane of commands and passwords. She found freedom in cyberspace and secretly worked up enough money to leave. It was something she had known she would have to do eventually, ever since she saw those haunting looks on the faces of her parents.

Getting into Havocnet was probably the best thing that ever happened to Gracia, because when she left home she at least had somewhere to go. Several of her acquaintances—friends, really, were scattered across the states. Slowly she made her progress from New Orleans and eventually Louisiana; with the stolen money she travelled little distances at a time. Two years of sleeping around in friends’ beds later, she wound up in San Francisco, California and stayed for good. She spent a couple of months living with Ghost, who was not a Havocnet user but a part of a gaming community and also probably her favourite person in the world. He was also the first other mutant she met and she loved that he didn’t seem too fucked about telling her he was one.

At first opportunity Gracia got herself a laptop and a cellular phone, upgrading them accordingly so she could do her work. She spent nights cramming her head with information, words and images and the subtle semiotics they triggered in her brain, or hacking paths through the infinite mazes of forbidden computer systems, or simply skating around the boards where nobody knew her face, where she was always welcome not because of what she was or was not, but because of what she could do simply by pulling at the virtual strings. And money was free, or nearly so; all she could need was at her fingertips every time she sat down and switched her computer on. Once she worked up enough she decided it was time to move out, so Ghost helped her find an apartment of her own.

Two years she spent hacking for work, for fun and more; she met up with Ghost often and they’d hang out at his place, playing games, at her place, watching awful films and generally enjoying life as much as they could. They avoided Mutant Control, did not draw attention to themselves and in turn weren’t too bothered. Occasionally Gracia found little ways of messing with the system, power outages in holding facilities that let several mutants escape, stolen money that she shared among the oppressed, always careful, making sure nothing could be tracked to them or, more importantly, back to her; and she did it all sitting down, typing furiously as her laptop played Wagner. Then recently she began toying with the idea of hacking into her bracelet and fixing some of the information they had on her so that they wouldn’t stop her at the entrance of every damn building. If it worked, she could do it for Ghost too, and others. She wrote a program that allowed her to hack into the MC database and did as she had planned, unaware that a slight slip would eventually lead to disaster.

Levi grew up as just another kid in New York city, somewhere between the slums and the middle class. His life was rather ordinary, his parents pushing him into activities and trying their best to make sure he grew up to be a suitable member of society. His family was small, consisting of his parents and his twin sister, Sally. They were very close growing up, sharing their experiences and looking out for each other. It was a rare occurrence for them to be apart and they shared a strong bond that only comes with being twins.

Levi started studying martial arts and gymnastics at a young age, the latter to be able to accompany his sister, and soon found that he had an affinity for both. He continued his studies throughout his teen years, becoming more and more adept at both. It seemed like he always knew just how and when to move, like his body registered actions at a much swifter rate than anyone else. With no other after school programs to use such skills, Levi turned to minor mischief with his sister: pick pocketing, picking fights, and the occasional larceny. As he got older he realized his body healed at a much faster rate, too. A deep cut or burn would fade in hours, and as time went on, even in minutes. It was when he noticed this that Levi knew he was what his parents always warned about: a mutant.

The day of his 16th birthday Levi woke early, snapping awake in reaction to some unknown force acting out in the area. He was up and out of bed, half way to his sisters room before he even know what was happening. He found her laying limp on the floor, completely unresponsive. Panic rose in him and he called out to his parents, knowing full well it would do no good. Their feigned concern did not fool him and after three weeks of Sally remaining in a stable though unresponsive coma, Levi decided to confront his parents over their disdain of what their daughter was costing them. His father, a man whose temper was even only at the best of times, aimed a fist at Levi's nose, which broke on impact. Blood flowed for only a moment before stopping, his nose easily relocated with one firm push, and the swelling visibly reducing. Levi had known, of course, of this ability of his, but had done all he could to hide it from his mutant-hating parents. In a rage over their worst nightmares being realized, Levi was thrown from the house, the last words he heard from his parents screaming that he was no son of theirs.

Despite, or perhaps because of, his parents hatred of mutant-kind, Levi learned to be fiercely proud of his powers and mutant genes. He reveled in them and used them to his best advantage, never shying away from showing them off, knowing full well he would likely escape any threat. His already natural aversion to authority was groomed into something stronger, more calculated.

Levi left New York, hopped from one place to the next, never staying long enough to get caught in the crimes he committed. He became adept at covering his tracks, running from authority and fighting his way out of tough spots with the ease that all his years of training had given him. He sought out people who would pay him for doing a job that they themselves were to proper to do, and when he didn't have a job he found himself quite at ease stealing people's identities and credit cards. The world was a pretty shitty place, where a lot of bad things happened for no reason, and Levi had learned to take it at face value. He doesn't see much room for redemption and instead just does what he needs to to get by.

Each year on his birthday, no matter where he was in the world, he would make it back to New York City to visit Sally. In five years she had aged into someone that no longer looked like him, though some resemblance was still hiding there. He would kiss her forehead, sit by her side and regale her with sightly adapted stories of what he had done the past year: where he had been, what mischief he had gotten into, what he expected she would be saying to him if she could. At first there was no doubt in his mind she would wake up form her coma; how could she not? She was strong, and without her a part of him was gone. Their connection had been so strong that when she failed to wake each passing year Levi himself felt less and less apart of the world. Five years changes a person, and Levi was no exception; his faith in Sally returning to the living world began to wane.

Sometimes he would dream of her. She would usually be just out of reach, just out of hearing distance, but on rare occasions it would be as if she were really there, they were really connecting. He would awake feeling acutely alone, and shake of the dreams as wishful thinking. Levi would continue his life of seeking out physical thrills and cheap emotions, running just to survive and being perfectly content in doing so.

Sally's temperament was even. At the beginning, she was gentle and kind, but reality beat that out of her real quick. The cruelty of others, the mean and hateful things people did to lowers someone else's self-esteem and elevated their's made her more cruel, more cynical. There was no moral high ground that Sally walked, nor would see stoop so low as to do evil deeds for no apparent reason. She walked the middle road, bestowing kindness to those who deserves such acts, and do evil deeds when justifiable.

Sally was a troublemaker from the beginning, on the verge of catastrophe. Everyone, even her parents, thought it was her twin brother, Levi, and his overbearing, dominant personality that strung her along into certain predicaments. Her response was a swift kick to their shin. No, it was not Levi's doing. It was her's.

Yes, Levi was more prompted to pick a fight, and Sally wasn't to far behind, backing him up, but where Levi had the knack for theatrics, Sally had the uncanny ability of stealth. Numerous of times she could be seen driving around town with a hot ride that she hijacked moments before. Sneaking out, breaking and entering was her forte, That is not to say, that Levi did not have his own grace about him. His fighting style was unmatched, perfected over long hours of repetition and practice and when it came to who was the better gymnast, Levi swept the board. Sally always came close second. Did it bother her? Maybe, a little, but it was better if he swept the board than those rich prats, who vehemently hated the twins with a passion. Ultimately, in the end, they were both kicked out when they were fourteen, when Sally beat a teammate to a bloody pulp, after he "accidentally" toppled over one of the bars Levi was practicing on. When she was kicked out, Levi saw no point in training without his little sis, so he followed her. Sally still has the scar on her knuckles where his teeth grazed her skin.

School was insufferable, home life was unbearable. Arguments upon fights would in sue between us (Levi and Sally) against basically the world, making Sally at times wish she  was someplace else, anywhere else. That desire manifest itself one night, when she heard through her bedroom door Sally's father arguing with Levi about something. It happen all the time and it was wearing her down. It was first a tugging sensation, when she concentrated (out of all things) an arcade just up the block. If felt like her body was being separated into too separate beings. In fact that is what exactly happen. She could feel her presence slumped over on the floor in her bedroom, and the Brooklyn breeze on her face in front of the arcade. It did not last long. She was pulled back to her body before the door open for her brother to check on her. It wasn't a surprise that her father did not do the same. She was use to it. She wasn't daddy's little girl anymore, just a stranger who has blood ties.

This was the first time, Sally came to the realization that she was a mutant. That she was a freak. It made her scared, vulnerable. She didn't even want to tell Levi. But in the end, after he pressuring her, she broke down and told him in tears. This was the first time Levi saw her cry since they were children. All Levi did, the only thing a brother could do, give her a shoulder to cry on. When she is exhausted all her tears, poke light of the situation to cheer her up. It worked.

Those two years were the best two years of their lives. They were scheming, conniving, and plotting with the use of Sally's power. But on the eve of their eighteenth birthday, Sally went to bed and never awoke. Levi was the first to find Sally’s body on the floor of her bedroom. He yelled her name, shaking her to walk up, but she never did. Hearing Levi’s scream for help, their parents came in- (Dana, you can add this part.)

For five years she was in a coma, her consciousness lost on the astral planes,which felt like an eternity. The time she spent here, she scavenge to survive, fighting of shadow demons everywhere she went. How she survive was a mixture of luck, skill and a miracle. Her mutant power of astral projection did not manifest itself here, leaving her to believe that she was already an astral projection to begin with, making her utterly useless in fights against the shadow demons. It was not until she was ambushed and was tackled off a ledge and falling into the void, where another power manifested itself. She was able to glide to a lower plateau. She did not know if she was distorting the laws of this world or it was a mutant ability. She was just thankful she did not fell any further or surely she would have died. This new found power and other factors helped her to survive until the day of her awakening.

How she got out of the astral plane, she could hardly remember. All she could remember when she awoke was a figure made of shadows, not black and sinister like the shadow demons, more blue like the night sky. Without question, she followed it until she found herself in the hospital bed hooked up with wires.

Confused, groggy and probably pumped up with enough drugs to kill an antelope, this place seemed more terrifying than the astral plane. She pulled out her own wires, and tried to get up but her legs felt like jello. It turned out being a sleep for ten years does that to a body. As the nurses hurried in to restrain her, she realized where she was, back on planet earth, but still she had to asked, “Where am I?”

They informed that she was in New York, she had been asleep for ten years, and it was unlikely that she would ever wake up. She found out that her parents never came to visit her, but once a year Levi would visit on their birthday no less and spend the whole day reenacting the mischief he got into, drawing crowds of wide eyed, but sickly kids to listen to the fantastic stories. The birthday cards line her dresser, and she read everyone about a hundred times. Over the next few weeks, she was caught up on everything that seemed important except why hasn’t her parents gone to see her, and where was Levi. The people at the hospital informed that they contacted Sally’s parents, but they could not get a hold of her brother. Still, no one came. During those weeks she began physical therapy, her determination to be discharged and see the outside world pushed her beyond her limits, and after about another month she was fighting fit.


Once free from the Hospital she made her first stop back home, where her parents resides. If she thought she would get a warm welcome she was sadly mistaken. The five minutes she spent with them went horribly wrong that she left in tears and ran toward the inner city of New York where she spent the beginning the next two years searching…

This is where her story begins-

Quincy had it all: a successful career that both satisfied and challenged her, a loving husband who was kind and protective, a beautiful home with a white picket fence in a good neighborhood, a loyal dog who rarely barked, and even a family that supported her choices and lifestyle. What she also had was a little gene lodged in her DNA, a few simple alleles that made her very, very different.

She had grown up in a loving family in Northern California, nestled among the wild mountains and soothing ocean waves. She was an only child born to Lindsey and Ronan Hayes. Ronan had moved from Ireland to pursue a career in medicine some time before meeting Lindsey (who was then studying to become a teacher) and the two had started a life together after obtaining their respective careers. While Lindsey was a normal human she knew that her husband was not, and did not care. He was an intelligent and loyal man; Ronan being a mutant did not change her feelings for him. And so Quincy grew up knowing her father was different, yet it did nothing to shadow the happy childhood she had.

Quincy's father, before moving to the United States, had perfected a serum to hide his mutant genes from scans and tests done in the country to keep track of the mutant population. It was how he managed to live so comfortably and be a valued member of society; no one but his family knew his secret. When Quincy we born he had a suspicion that she would someday need to use his serum as well, as it was possible she had inherited a mutation from him. Only days after she had started showing signs of a mutation her father had begun injecting her with the serum, taking no chances of allowing the authorities to know of her mutant genes. It would only open doors for her, he had said. The serum would only hide the genes from the detectors and blood tests that mutant control ran, and nothing more. Without it, she would never be able to live out her dreams. This was the only way to fit in, to be on the right side of the glass. It had to be done. Being so young and ambitious, Quincy trusted her father. He did this, too, after-all. She could still use her power, but no one was the wiser. It was the best of both worlds. So what if she had to inject herself twice a day for the rest of her life? It was a small price to pay to be able to live in the world like a normal person. She just had to be careful, always cautious about where she used her powers, and never forget a dose. If she missed even a single dose the effects would soon fade and she would be vulnerable to the tests of mutant control.

As she grew older Quincy began to experiment with her powers with the help of her father. She learned to control the flow of time around her, how to keep it at a steady pace that was not its natural state, and how to extend its range beyond herself. She would often slow time down when she wanted to surprise her parents with a home cooked meal faster than they thought possible, and sped it up when she wanted to seem like she had been working on her homework for longer than she really had. If her parents noticed she would be scolded and reminded of her need to act like a normal person when others were around. Eventually the lesson stuck in her mind; her powers could be her downfall if she let them.

Childhood passed by in a flash, and soon Quincy was graduating high school as valedictorian and all the doors in the world were open to her. She knew this would not have been the case if she had not had a father who had helped keep her mutation a secret, and she valued the position she had in life, knowing it could all one day be ripped from her. Still, she kept a bright outlook on her future and on life as she left home to pursue further education in pursuit of becoming a doctor.

Quincy met her future husband, Charlie, in college. He had been sitting in the library, busy typing away at his computer, when she took the open seat next to him. Though she was only hours away from an important final she couldn't help glancing away from her notes and over to the dark haired man sitting beside her. When he noticed her glancing his way so often she smiled, whispered an apology, and asked what he was working on. It was a brazen move on her part, but she wanted to know more, and she wasn't afraid to strike up a conversation with a stranger. They ended up getting dinner after Quincy's final and were dating soon after. Charlie was studying to be an author; he had already published some short stories on his own while still in school. He was reserved and somewhat withdrawn around others, but highly creative and full of stories to tell Quincy when they were spending lazy mornings in bed together. They worked well together, her bringing him out of his shell when she dragged him along on group outings with her friends, and him always around for her to count on. They stuck together through college, Quincy graduating and moving on to medical school right after, and Charlie taking a job at a local bookstore while writing all hours of the day.

He of course knew of her secret, and when she slowed down time on their wedding day it seemed to last forever. Their first kiss as husband and wife was an eternity, a perfect beginning to their married life together. She was twenty-five when they were married, just before she started her residency in a nearby hospital. Life as a resident in the ER was perfect to Quincy; she could use her power discretely in the hectic hospital, and slow down time around her so she could figure out a persons ailments and do her best to fix them as quickly as possible. Her seemingly fast work on the table saved many a life, and Quincy knew then that her mutation was given to her in order for her to help people.

Time passed as usual; Quincy and Charlie moved into a nice house in the suburbs and kept up regular date nights and outings despite her hectic schedule. About the same time she passed her medical license exam Charlie published his first novel, which quickly became a huge success. It seemed the two of them were living the dream. Quincy started working at her father's medical office almost immediately after getting her license. This was what she had spent her whole life working up to and it was finally hers to grasp. She had patients to look after, a decent schedule that allowed time at home, and knowledge and skill she had spent so long obtaining. She could finally breath a sigh of relief and settle into her comfortable life.

She loved her husband, she loved her job, she loved her home, she even loved the way the little metal bracelet on her wrist chimed and sang when it hit other surfaces. As long as she was careful she was safe, and happier than she could imagine. Unfortunately things can never stay the same, and it was only a matter of time before Quincy's life would be interrupted.