Mutant X Characters: Emma deLauro
Emma deLauro -- Played by Lauren Lee Smith
Links: Beyond Friends | Biogenius Psionic: Adam/Emma | Crimson Redd | Eboni Orchid | Emma/Brennan Fanfiction | Emma & Shalimar: The Best Collection | Emma and Shalimar Fic Heaven | Empathy | Facebook | Give Us a Kiss | Kissing Fingertips | Notable Emma and Shalimar Mutant X Fiction | Passion & Perfection with Livejournal | Realm of the Shadow | Smoke on Water: Emma and Jesse | Wereleopard's Lair | Xcons
First Mutant's bio of Emma DeLauro
Emma grew up in Seattle, Washington. Her parents were two hippie "flakes" who taught her a respect for the spiritual and a distrust of mechanical things. She first discovered her psionic abilities at the age of five when she was able to find her parents telempathically after they had lost her at a rock concert. She was 10 when her parents left her, and she was transferred to a foster home. Emma attended Sloman High School with fellow psionic Michelle Bigelow. She and the telecybernetic Michelle would go shopping together, play pranks on the local coffee shop owner, steal furniture from the dean of students' office, and have long philosophical debates. Emma occasionally used her powers to make dates jump through hoops for her, and learned to speak Finnish from a foreign exchange student she dated in high school. After graduation, she lost touch with Michelle and worked at a Leverman and Stokes boutique selling Misses and Petites. The GSA found her and chased her literally into the arms of Mutant X. During her time with the team, the youngest member of Mutant X learned to hone her telempathic gifts and expand to telepathy, mind control, illusions, and precognition. The most socially conscious member of Mutant X, Emma's abilities gave her occasional migraines. She developed her psionic blast at the end of her first year, and her personality darkened as she became more powerful and less trusting of Mutant X's leader, Adam Kane. Emma was killed in an explosion at Shalimar Fox's father's plant, Naxcon Corporation (see What happened to Emma?). She had been with Mutant X for about two years.
Emma-centric episodes: " Shock of the New" (101) & " I Scream the Body Electric" (102), " Double Vision," (112), " Lazarus Syndrome" (115), " Interface" (116), " At Destiny's End" (212), " Inferno" (218), " Reality Check" (220), " Reawakening" (221)
Emma trivia: As a child, Emma once communed with the ghost of a small girl during a séance of her mother's. Emma's biggest fear is of being blind.
*Emma's age: Emma is consistently listed as the youngest member of Mutant X, so she must be younger than Shalimar's 25 years of age. Indeed, her official site profile agrees that she is in her early twenties.
*Emma's original abilities: According to early casting breakdowns, Emma's character was originally named Emma DeSalvo, codename "Rapport." Her initial new mutant ability was telepathy (akin to X-Men's Jean Grey), and she was to have a romantic relationship with Brennan. Her codename was discarded and ability changed to telempathy--emphasis on the "m"--after the Fox Studios vs. Marvel lawsuit discouraged similarities to the X-Men film.
*Emma's telempathy: Throughout the first season, Adam calls Emma a telempath, one who can sense and manipulate the emotions of others. She does indeed have this gift, but her range has always exceeded this one facet of psionics, since the very first episode. She demonstrates her ability to cast illusions on Allison Turner in “Shock of the New,” by making two harmless dock workers look like GS agents. In "Russian Roulette" and "The Meaning of Death," she makes Sonya and Jesse respectively feel as though they are choking. Fear and panic are emotions. Suffocation is not. Neither is blindness, which she accomplishes with the GS agents in "In the Presence of Mine Enemies," and with Adam in "Double Vision." In "Fool for Love," she displays telepathy after enhancing a witness’s memory of a license plate number. No one should be surprised, therefore, that her teammates are unaware of Emma’s growing proficiency as the second season wears on.
Quotes from Emma:
~ You'd be surprised how persuasive I can be when it comes to Misses and Petites.
~ Emma: Apology accepted. Jesse: Huh? Emma: I accept your apology for your obnoxious attitude earlier.
~ Brennan: It's not a basketball game, Emma. Emma: Then maybe it's time you stopped treating it like one.
~ Dr. Ken Harrison: You consider yourself normal? Emma B: I consider myself gifted. And too valuable to be wasted as some mad doctor's lab rat.
~ Mason: Why do you want to leave Mutant X? Emma B: I'm sick of their mealy-mouthed non-lethal style. I'm ready for some real action. I thought I could do well here.
~ Adam: I didn't know you drank. Emma B: If you're looking for the teetotaler version, I believe she's with you.
~ Mason: Don't use your telepathy on me. Emma B: Promise.
~ I think my yang took over my yin.
~ Adam, look into her eyes! You're choking the one person in the world who would do anything to protect you, who loves you more fiercely than anyone else.
~ Faith is for God. What you're talking about is denial.
~ So are you gonna sit here all day and brood or are you just practicing intimidating the plants?
~ Jesse, Shalimar and Brennan get all the action while I hang around and mess with people's feelings. Now I finally get to kick some ass too.
~ I'm just playing around. Did you have a funectomy or what?
~ Shalimar: You're a beast! Emma: You're a baby.
~ Jesse: The minute I'm sure he's okay, I'm gonna kill him. Emma: Get in line.
~ Shalimar: I can look out for myself! Emma: Yeah. Obviously.
~ Emma: I’ll handle this. Shalimar: Girl, I like you more and more every day.
~ Would you please just be careful? You almost already died once today.
~ Nikki Rogers: I’ve never seen anyone die before. It was horrible. Emma: Yeah, it always is the first time. For some of us, it doesn’t really get much better from there.
~ Friends know when you’re lying too.
~ It’s not nice to think those kinds of thoughts about your partner.
~ I can guarantee you’ll never have one of those thoughts again. About anybody. Ever.
~ This is going broadband. You might want to hold onto something.
~ Jesse: My God, Emma, I didn’t know you could do something like that. Emma: Jesse? Jesse: What? [she blasts him] Emma: You still don’t know.
~ You know, I grew up in Seattle. I can’t believe I’m actually praying for rain.
~ Every time somebody is feeling something they shouldn’t, I should mess around in their heads? Who decides when it’s okay, Shal, me? You?
~ Well, you can keep your trust. I’ll take the sure thing any day.
~ Could you please not use the word 'adjustment'? It makes me feel like a skirt that's been hemmed.
~ Jesse: I'll cover the reporter. Emma: And I'll make sure he doesn't end up giving her an exclusive.
~ Come on, crank it up a few notches. Let’s see him really sweat.
~ Adam: I think it has more to do with the fact that I funded the hospital’s new MRI machine last month. Emma: Nice. And here I was worried to ask for a raise.
~ If you ask me, it’s a dream come true. Starting a new life in a new town where no one knows you. No worries, no preconceptions.
~ Levak Ivanov: Your secrets will bring in a hefty price, Dr. Kane. Emma: You first.
~ There are things I can do that I haven’t even shown my partners. And it really doesn’t matter that you’re gonna see, because you won’t be able to tell anybody.
~ He was the predator and then he was the prey. He doesn’t deserve any sympathy. If that makes me cruel, then so be it.
~ Adam: It’s gonna take some time for these scars to heal. Emma: No, they’re not gonna heal. She’s just gonna learn to deal with it.
~ You want fear? Come and get me.
~ Emma: I knew, and you should have trusted me. Adam: We will next time. Emma: Yeah. Well, next time, I won’t give you a choice.
~ Emma: What do you want me to do? Pretend that I believe you? Adam: I want you to stay out of head. You’re not invited.
~ Adam My name is on a lot of lists. Emma: That’s not the right answer, Adam.
~ When you can see into someone’s soul, you don’t have the same illusions that other people do. You want to believe that people can change, but they don’t. Shalimar has to realize that.
~ You were right, Brennan. There’s a point where you have to go past your usual moral code. Now I’ve understood what’s been going on for a long time, and I think the rest of you deserve to know too. Adam: Emma. Stop it. Emma: I could make you talk, Adam. But you’re gonna do it yourself.
Official Site bio
Emma deLauro was a mischievous knockout in her early 20's - a telempath who could communicate her own feelings - and receive the feelings of others around her. Emma couldn't read thoughts, but she could sense in great detail an emotional state of mind - and learn an awful lot about another person from it. When these gifts combined with her party girl personality, fun and trouble were a double guarantee.
Season 1 DVD bio
Emma Delauro is in her early 20s, a beautiful, charming and saucily sexy young woman seemingly gifted with a wisdom beyond her years - an apparent wisdom that's a direct result of her mutant ability - a telempathic linkage with other people. Emma can communicate her own feelings, and receive those of others around her - powers that often leave her psychically exhausted and emotionally wrung out.
She can also, with some effort, manipulate the way others feel, think and react by planting powerful emotional suggestions in her unknowing subject's deep unconscious. Emma is a sunnily happy young woman - with a sense of mischief totally at odds with her slinky new age persona - a prankish nature that come out in using her abilities to her own advantage in personal matters.
As much as she'll categorically deny it, she's not above using her capacity to manipulate those around her - like clerks in retail stores, who frequently find unadvertised discounts on just the items Emma's looking for - or using the same gifts to encourage the attentions of someone she finds attractive - some guy, for example, whose taste runs more into the cheerleader type, as opposed to this breathy and sensitive beauty - who's actually no shrinking violet.
Emma's parents were baby boomer hippies, living an itinerant life, travelling from commune to commune in the late 1970s - unwilling to acknowledge that the lifestyle they'd chosen for themselves was rapidly vanishing.
When her mom became pregnant with Emma, the young couple, broke as always, answered an ad in an underground newspaper, which offered to pay all health expenses plus a living bonus of $10,000 to pregnant mothers willing to participate in a new form of prenatal care and childbirth.
No secret where that lead. Emma's mom and dad were interviewed by a crew of young sympathetic doctors - precisely the sort of countercultural types they had spent their lives with, in free clinics and workshops. Along with the other similar pregnant girls at the workshop, Emma's mom filled out a questionnaire. She revealed she hoped to have a little girl who would be caring and sensitive to the feelings of others - to counter the hard shell the world seemed to be growing.
Emma was everything her parents hoped she might be - a lovely, caring child that seemed to know what would make people happy - because, since her New Mutant abilities were there from birth, even before she could talk, Emma could anticipate people's needs and feelings - becoming a bit of a people pleaser before she even understood the concept.
Unfortunately Emma's parents never grew up enough to actually become adults, so they dumped her with friends, hit the road in the latest of a long string of VW buses, and disappeared - never to be heard of again.
As each year passed, and she moved from foster home to foster home, her powers grew exponentially - lateral with her abilities to speak and reason. Emma can't read minds, but she can sense in great detail an emotional condition - and learn an awful lot about another person from it… and by the same token , she can transmit suggestions, alternative thoughts, ideas… and implicit commands.
Season 1 DVD Extras: Reports from Genomex
To: All Technical Staff and Abstract Statisticians From: Dr. Kenneth Harrison
Gentlemen (& Drs. Varady and Michelson),
Mr. Eckhart has requested that focus in your departments be diverted to studying the recent electrical phenomenon that divided the right/let hemispheres of Mutant X activist Emma DeLauro's brain (see security file MX999PDE) and manifested itself in two distinct living bodies. Although the actual case did not profit Genomex, the possibilities it presented for future maneuvers cannot be ignored.
The defining accident, which caused the molecular/biological replication, occurred during a clash of energy waveforms produced by two mutant Elementals. One of the subjects was Mutant X terrorist, Brennan Mulwray (security file MX999EMB), who generates bolts of electrical energy. The other was former Genomex employee Matilda "Matty" Conlan (security file GX825ECM), a laboratory-enhanced Magnetic. A combination of Elemental forces, stress and numerous probability abstractions managed to cleve the Psionic DeLauro into two distinct entities: one agressive, one passive. Mr. Eckhart wants to know why. It is his ultimate desire that Genomex scientists dissect the incident, pinpoint how the "split" happened and then create a weapon that can artificially induce the same effect. Test subjects will be made available from the stasis banks of Section Nine upon request.
Thank you, Kenneth Harrison
Note: From 2001-02 Tribune Entertainment created six Mutant X faux websites as part of the Mutant X official site, in order to supplement the information from the television series. These sites featured a great wealth of background information about the Mutant X characters and plot's storylines, but they disappeared in early 2005. I'm including faux website information here for completeness, but none of the following material is my own.
From Adam's interviews on Mutant X Lives
...Interviews - Emma #1
Emma DeLauro is the youngest member I have ever recruited into MUTANT X. Her telempathy masks this fact. It gives her an edge in confrontations that would make most adults shrink, but deep down she is still a wounded girl. I can never forget that. It was the detail that almost made me lose her. The following transcript is not our initial session, but from the first one we had after she decided to join the team.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EMMA: It almost seems like you can read my mind, not the other way around.
A: No. I just make educated guesses.
EMMA: Sometimes that’s better…and truer.
A: How do you mean?
EMMA: Well, just because I tap into people’s heads doesn’t mean I can tell what’s going on with them. It’s like hearing a foreign language. If you don’t understand the basic person you’re dealing with…
A: You get lost.
EMMA: Yes. And all the images I get become so personal to me. Like nightmares. If I distance myself I could go insane. Really.
A: Is that why you denied being a New Mutant for so long?
EMMA: Partly. But it’s more to do with my parents.
A: But they aren’t-
EMMA: Mutants? No. Worse. They’re hippies. Aging, pot-drenched flakes. They wander from commune to commune and can’t commit to more than a sentence. All this big anti-establish talk and yet neither one of them could even finish a bedtime story for their little girl.
A: And the fact that you were a born empathic…?
EMMA: Made no difference. They would have been freaked out if I’d just been a kid who could play the piano well. You see what I’m saying? With that kind of childhood I could never feel normal. Mutant or not.
A: But you don’t hate your mother and father.
EMMA: No, of course not. And I know they love me. I just don’t respect them. Any way, they didn’t really raise me in the end. I got shuttled between friends, cousins and finally my grandmother until I was out of school and old enough to be on my own.
A: Old enough?
EMMA: Well, my powers helped out a lot there. You can turn a lot of “no’s” into “yes’s” when you zap a pretty picture into someone’s head. Like I told you, I made a killing in retail. (A guilty giggle).
A: So why not just continue raking it in?
EMMA: Because it’s wrong. My parents might have been flakes but they did teach me the importance of privacy. If I kept pushing things into other minds I’m no better than those goons at Genomex.
A: I’m glad you’re here with us, Emma.
EMMA: I am too. Now. I wish there was more than one psionic on board though. I don’t want to let you down.
A: One last question. You’ve seen a lot of ugly thoughts in your young life and yet, you remain quite positive. How is that?
EMMA: I can share it with you, if you don’t mind.
A: Please do.
EMMA: I don’t know if this is a memory or a dream, but it always brings me strength.
(She empaths an image into my mind. It is of a warm, glowing field. The colors are vivid and unreal. Young, loving parents embrace a child in a white shift. A tranquil hum fills the air. Tears come to my eyes as it softly fades.)
EMMA: See?
:: End of Transcription
Emma #2 From Adam's interviews on Mutant X Lives
Emma has been through an emotional wringer lately. Manipulated by enemies and former friends, her empathic abilities have had to block out as many emotions as they’ve let in. Her attitude about her new powers also concerns me. I need to explore her recent leap from shrinking violet to tiger lily.
EMMA: This is going to be about Michele, isn’t it?
A: You’re scanning me?
EMMA: I don’t have to. She was bound to come up. We haven’t talked about her since she died.
A: Well, since you brought up the subject…
EMMA: Look. Michele was one of the few close friends I’ve ever had. Of course what happened to her is going to hurt me. You don’t need to be a telempath to figure that one out. We were two dorky girls growing up in Seattle. We made each other feel normal and it bonded us together. But obviously, we drifted apart. Look at the different choices we made.
A: Why do you think she went over to Eckhart?
EMMA: God, I wish I knew. Why didn’t I let my ethics slip just once and read her feelings before it was too late?
A: Because if you were that kind of person, you’d probably be working for Genomex as well. Try making a guess not as a Psionic but simply as Michele’s close friend.
EMMA: Then I’d have to say she was addicted to being a Telecyber. Those powers became all that mattered. (She starts to sob and takes a minute to dry her eyes and compose)
EMMA: Anything else you want me to wrench my heart over. I mean, as long as the waterworks are flowing…?
A: Caleb Mathius?
EMMA: What about him? He was a New Mutant vampire, Adam. I got caught in his team spell for a while. I broke out of it, didn’t I? God, Brennan left the team over that Insect Feral Cruella and you’ve barely said a word to him but---(A BEAT) Oh. You have. Sorry, sorry. Your thought was just too big for me to screen out.
A: It’s all right…this time. Speaking of your powers how are the new ones coming along?
EMMA: They’re so awesome! Do you know how great it feels to finally have a hard ball to pitch? I don’t have to stay in the background any more. I can fight up front with Shalimar and Brennan, pitching my psionic blasts in between their best shots!
A: Have you determined their range yet?
EMMA: Well, yesterday against those GSAgents I tried a straight emotional wash. Not only were they all in tears but Shalimar said she felt like crying…and was almost a block away!
A: Impressive. What other emotions can you spread besides the blues?
EMMA: Fear is easy. Rage, but who wants to spread that?
A: What about laughter? And joy?
EMMA: They’re a lot harder. In fact, I was going to ask you about that.
A: Maybe those feelings are more difficult to master because you aren’t as familiar with them yourself.
EMMA: Now who’s reading minds?
A: Of the four of you, Emma, your power increase has proved to be the most impressive…and dangerous.
EMMA: Do you think I can’t handle it? I told you, I’m not like Michele!
A: Why are you all so defensive these days? Is it Ashlocke? (No reply)
A: What I think is that we’ve worked long and hard on getting you to control your basic psionics. Just how was that accomplished?
EMMA: By getting me to focus on my own feelings inside of others.
A: So you do understand my concerns now that your abilities have received such a tremendous boost?
EMMA: Yes. And to tell you the truth, deep down they scare me too.
From Genomex.net, GENOMEX SECURITY FILE: MX999PDE DeLauro, Emma
Priority Clearance Only
UPDATED 5/30
The subject profiled is a member of the outlaw faction Mutant X.
This is the most recent recruit to Adam's crew of terrorists (see file #MX999AAA). She is a Psionic in her early teens/late twenties with the power of telempathy. DeLauro can read emotions and plant or manipulate them in others. While there are many in this classification, her abilities surpass the majority.
DeLauro is the child of two college students who were paid percipients in Genomex DNA experiments (via the Breedlove Institute). The result was a New Mutant offspring that neither had the responsibility to raise. Fostered or cared for by relatives, the Psionic was carefully tracked by the GSA throughout her youth and approached as an agent candidate when her empathic condition had matured and could be honed as a weapon. Once again, Adam's intervention kept her from becoming part of Genomex's security force and instead one of its more prominent foes.
Unlike her cohorts, DeLauro is not characterized as being aggressive or a dangerous physical threat. She is often employed in the background of an attack or as a tracker. This aside, HER MENTAL CAPABILITIES CANNOT BE UNDERESTIMATED. Many a GSAgent has fallen prey to this misconception and allowed themselves to be controlled by her psionic invasions.
Research has shown that the best method of felling a Telempath is to assault where they strike. Diseased images conjured in one's head should cause a ricochet effect, crippling them emotionally. There is a known vulnerability in all Psionics that causes them to tread a line thin between sanity and madness. As the subject has already demonstrated an inclination to separate contrasting aspects of her personality (see Dr. Harrison's file on the "DeLauro Split") it is suggested that a psychological counterattack may be the most effective way of subduing her.
DeLauro has little or no contact with her immediate family and use of close friends to turn her (see Personnel file on deceased GSAgent Michelle Bigelow) has proved futile. As it appears the Psionic's strongest emotional ties are with fellow Mutant X activists, injury to any of them should prove to be a powerful way to strike and disable her.
Mr. Eckhart has ordered that, above all Mutant X members, DeLauro is the most valuable and should be brought in with as little damage as possible.
This mandate remains in place UFN.
Return to The Mutant X Warehouse
Links: Beyond Friends | Biogenius Psionic: Adam/Emma | Crimson Redd | Eboni Orchid | Emma/Brennan Fanfiction | Emma & Shalimar: The Best Collection | Emma and Shalimar Fic Heaven | Empathy | Facebook | Give Us a Kiss | Kissing Fingertips | Notable Emma and Shalimar Mutant X Fiction | Passion & Perfection with Livejournal | Realm of the Shadow | Smoke on Water: Emma and Jesse | Wereleopard's Lair | Xcons
First Mutant's bio of Emma DeLauro
Emma grew up in Seattle, Washington. Her parents were two hippie "flakes" who taught her a respect for the spiritual and a distrust of mechanical things. She first discovered her psionic abilities at the age of five when she was able to find her parents telempathically after they had lost her at a rock concert. She was 10 when her parents left her, and she was transferred to a foster home. Emma attended Sloman High School with fellow psionic Michelle Bigelow. She and the telecybernetic Michelle would go shopping together, play pranks on the local coffee shop owner, steal furniture from the dean of students' office, and have long philosophical debates. Emma occasionally used her powers to make dates jump through hoops for her, and learned to speak Finnish from a foreign exchange student she dated in high school. After graduation, she lost touch with Michelle and worked at a Leverman and Stokes boutique selling Misses and Petites. The GSA found her and chased her literally into the arms of Mutant X. During her time with the team, the youngest member of Mutant X learned to hone her telempathic gifts and expand to telepathy, mind control, illusions, and precognition. The most socially conscious member of Mutant X, Emma's abilities gave her occasional migraines. She developed her psionic blast at the end of her first year, and her personality darkened as she became more powerful and less trusting of Mutant X's leader, Adam Kane. Emma was killed in an explosion at Shalimar Fox's father's plant, Naxcon Corporation (see What happened to Emma?). She had been with Mutant X for about two years.
Emma-centric episodes: " Shock of the New" (101) & " I Scream the Body Electric" (102), " Double Vision," (112), " Lazarus Syndrome" (115), " Interface" (116), " At Destiny's End" (212), " Inferno" (218), " Reality Check" (220), " Reawakening" (221)
Emma trivia: As a child, Emma once communed with the ghost of a small girl during a séance of her mother's. Emma's biggest fear is of being blind.
*Emma's age: Emma is consistently listed as the youngest member of Mutant X, so she must be younger than Shalimar's 25 years of age. Indeed, her official site profile agrees that she is in her early twenties.
*Emma's original abilities: According to early casting breakdowns, Emma's character was originally named Emma DeSalvo, codename "Rapport." Her initial new mutant ability was telepathy (akin to X-Men's Jean Grey), and she was to have a romantic relationship with Brennan. Her codename was discarded and ability changed to telempathy--emphasis on the "m"--after the Fox Studios vs. Marvel lawsuit discouraged similarities to the X-Men film.
*Emma's telempathy: Throughout the first season, Adam calls Emma a telempath, one who can sense and manipulate the emotions of others. She does indeed have this gift, but her range has always exceeded this one facet of psionics, since the very first episode. She demonstrates her ability to cast illusions on Allison Turner in “Shock of the New,” by making two harmless dock workers look like GS agents. In "Russian Roulette" and "The Meaning of Death," she makes Sonya and Jesse respectively feel as though they are choking. Fear and panic are emotions. Suffocation is not. Neither is blindness, which she accomplishes with the GS agents in "In the Presence of Mine Enemies," and with Adam in "Double Vision." In "Fool for Love," she displays telepathy after enhancing a witness’s memory of a license plate number. No one should be surprised, therefore, that her teammates are unaware of Emma’s growing proficiency as the second season wears on.
Quotes from Emma:
~ You'd be surprised how persuasive I can be when it comes to Misses and Petites.
~ Emma: Apology accepted. Jesse: Huh? Emma: I accept your apology for your obnoxious attitude earlier.
~ Brennan: It's not a basketball game, Emma. Emma: Then maybe it's time you stopped treating it like one.
~ Dr. Ken Harrison: You consider yourself normal? Emma B: I consider myself gifted. And too valuable to be wasted as some mad doctor's lab rat.
~ Mason: Why do you want to leave Mutant X? Emma B: I'm sick of their mealy-mouthed non-lethal style. I'm ready for some real action. I thought I could do well here.
~ Adam: I didn't know you drank. Emma B: If you're looking for the teetotaler version, I believe she's with you.
~ Mason: Don't use your telepathy on me. Emma B: Promise.
~ I think my yang took over my yin.
~ Adam, look into her eyes! You're choking the one person in the world who would do anything to protect you, who loves you more fiercely than anyone else.
~ Faith is for God. What you're talking about is denial.
~ So are you gonna sit here all day and brood or are you just practicing intimidating the plants?
~ Jesse, Shalimar and Brennan get all the action while I hang around and mess with people's feelings. Now I finally get to kick some ass too.
~ I'm just playing around. Did you have a funectomy or what?
~ Shalimar: You're a beast! Emma: You're a baby.
~ Jesse: The minute I'm sure he's okay, I'm gonna kill him. Emma: Get in line.
~ Shalimar: I can look out for myself! Emma: Yeah. Obviously.
~ Emma: I’ll handle this. Shalimar: Girl, I like you more and more every day.
~ Would you please just be careful? You almost already died once today.
~ Nikki Rogers: I’ve never seen anyone die before. It was horrible. Emma: Yeah, it always is the first time. For some of us, it doesn’t really get much better from there.
~ Friends know when you’re lying too.
~ It’s not nice to think those kinds of thoughts about your partner.
~ I can guarantee you’ll never have one of those thoughts again. About anybody. Ever.
~ This is going broadband. You might want to hold onto something.
~ Jesse: My God, Emma, I didn’t know you could do something like that. Emma: Jesse? Jesse: What? [she blasts him] Emma: You still don’t know.
~ You know, I grew up in Seattle. I can’t believe I’m actually praying for rain.
~ Every time somebody is feeling something they shouldn’t, I should mess around in their heads? Who decides when it’s okay, Shal, me? You?
~ Well, you can keep your trust. I’ll take the sure thing any day.
~ Could you please not use the word 'adjustment'? It makes me feel like a skirt that's been hemmed.
~ Jesse: I'll cover the reporter. Emma: And I'll make sure he doesn't end up giving her an exclusive.
~ Come on, crank it up a few notches. Let’s see him really sweat.
~ Adam: I think it has more to do with the fact that I funded the hospital’s new MRI machine last month. Emma: Nice. And here I was worried to ask for a raise.
~ If you ask me, it’s a dream come true. Starting a new life in a new town where no one knows you. No worries, no preconceptions.
~ Levak Ivanov: Your secrets will bring in a hefty price, Dr. Kane. Emma: You first.
~ There are things I can do that I haven’t even shown my partners. And it really doesn’t matter that you’re gonna see, because you won’t be able to tell anybody.
~ He was the predator and then he was the prey. He doesn’t deserve any sympathy. If that makes me cruel, then so be it.
~ Adam: It’s gonna take some time for these scars to heal. Emma: No, they’re not gonna heal. She’s just gonna learn to deal with it.
~ You want fear? Come and get me.
~ Emma: I knew, and you should have trusted me. Adam: We will next time. Emma: Yeah. Well, next time, I won’t give you a choice.
~ Emma: What do you want me to do? Pretend that I believe you? Adam: I want you to stay out of head. You’re not invited.
~ Adam My name is on a lot of lists. Emma: That’s not the right answer, Adam.
~ When you can see into someone’s soul, you don’t have the same illusions that other people do. You want to believe that people can change, but they don’t. Shalimar has to realize that.
~ You were right, Brennan. There’s a point where you have to go past your usual moral code. Now I’ve understood what’s been going on for a long time, and I think the rest of you deserve to know too. Adam: Emma. Stop it. Emma: I could make you talk, Adam. But you’re gonna do it yourself.
Official Site bio
Emma deLauro was a mischievous knockout in her early 20's - a telempath who could communicate her own feelings - and receive the feelings of others around her. Emma couldn't read thoughts, but she could sense in great detail an emotional state of mind - and learn an awful lot about another person from it. When these gifts combined with her party girl personality, fun and trouble were a double guarantee.
Season 1 DVD bio
Emma Delauro is in her early 20s, a beautiful, charming and saucily sexy young woman seemingly gifted with a wisdom beyond her years - an apparent wisdom that's a direct result of her mutant ability - a telempathic linkage with other people. Emma can communicate her own feelings, and receive those of others around her - powers that often leave her psychically exhausted and emotionally wrung out.
She can also, with some effort, manipulate the way others feel, think and react by planting powerful emotional suggestions in her unknowing subject's deep unconscious. Emma is a sunnily happy young woman - with a sense of mischief totally at odds with her slinky new age persona - a prankish nature that come out in using her abilities to her own advantage in personal matters.
As much as she'll categorically deny it, she's not above using her capacity to manipulate those around her - like clerks in retail stores, who frequently find unadvertised discounts on just the items Emma's looking for - or using the same gifts to encourage the attentions of someone she finds attractive - some guy, for example, whose taste runs more into the cheerleader type, as opposed to this breathy and sensitive beauty - who's actually no shrinking violet.
Emma's parents were baby boomer hippies, living an itinerant life, travelling from commune to commune in the late 1970s - unwilling to acknowledge that the lifestyle they'd chosen for themselves was rapidly vanishing.
When her mom became pregnant with Emma, the young couple, broke as always, answered an ad in an underground newspaper, which offered to pay all health expenses plus a living bonus of $10,000 to pregnant mothers willing to participate in a new form of prenatal care and childbirth.
No secret where that lead. Emma's mom and dad were interviewed by a crew of young sympathetic doctors - precisely the sort of countercultural types they had spent their lives with, in free clinics and workshops. Along with the other similar pregnant girls at the workshop, Emma's mom filled out a questionnaire. She revealed she hoped to have a little girl who would be caring and sensitive to the feelings of others - to counter the hard shell the world seemed to be growing.
Emma was everything her parents hoped she might be - a lovely, caring child that seemed to know what would make people happy - because, since her New Mutant abilities were there from birth, even before she could talk, Emma could anticipate people's needs and feelings - becoming a bit of a people pleaser before she even understood the concept.
Unfortunately Emma's parents never grew up enough to actually become adults, so they dumped her with friends, hit the road in the latest of a long string of VW buses, and disappeared - never to be heard of again.
As each year passed, and she moved from foster home to foster home, her powers grew exponentially - lateral with her abilities to speak and reason. Emma can't read minds, but she can sense in great detail an emotional condition - and learn an awful lot about another person from it… and by the same token , she can transmit suggestions, alternative thoughts, ideas… and implicit commands.
Season 1 DVD Extras: Reports from Genomex
To: All Technical Staff and Abstract Statisticians From: Dr. Kenneth Harrison
Gentlemen (& Drs. Varady and Michelson),
Mr. Eckhart has requested that focus in your departments be diverted to studying the recent electrical phenomenon that divided the right/let hemispheres of Mutant X activist Emma DeLauro's brain (see security file MX999PDE) and manifested itself in two distinct living bodies. Although the actual case did not profit Genomex, the possibilities it presented for future maneuvers cannot be ignored.
The defining accident, which caused the molecular/biological replication, occurred during a clash of energy waveforms produced by two mutant Elementals. One of the subjects was Mutant X terrorist, Brennan Mulwray (security file MX999EMB), who generates bolts of electrical energy. The other was former Genomex employee Matilda "Matty" Conlan (security file GX825ECM), a laboratory-enhanced Magnetic. A combination of Elemental forces, stress and numerous probability abstractions managed to cleve the Psionic DeLauro into two distinct entities: one agressive, one passive. Mr. Eckhart wants to know why. It is his ultimate desire that Genomex scientists dissect the incident, pinpoint how the "split" happened and then create a weapon that can artificially induce the same effect. Test subjects will be made available from the stasis banks of Section Nine upon request.
Thank you, Kenneth Harrison
Note: From 2001-02 Tribune Entertainment created six Mutant X faux websites as part of the Mutant X official site, in order to supplement the information from the television series. These sites featured a great wealth of background information about the Mutant X characters and plot's storylines, but they disappeared in early 2005. I'm including faux website information here for completeness, but none of the following material is my own.
From Adam's interviews on Mutant X Lives
...Interviews - Emma #1
Emma DeLauro is the youngest member I have ever recruited into MUTANT X. Her telempathy masks this fact. It gives her an edge in confrontations that would make most adults shrink, but deep down she is still a wounded girl. I can never forget that. It was the detail that almost made me lose her. The following transcript is not our initial session, but from the first one we had after she decided to join the team.
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EMMA: It almost seems like you can read my mind, not the other way around.
A: No. I just make educated guesses.
EMMA: Sometimes that’s better…and truer.
A: How do you mean?
EMMA: Well, just because I tap into people’s heads doesn’t mean I can tell what’s going on with them. It’s like hearing a foreign language. If you don’t understand the basic person you’re dealing with…
A: You get lost.
EMMA: Yes. And all the images I get become so personal to me. Like nightmares. If I distance myself I could go insane. Really.
A: Is that why you denied being a New Mutant for so long?
EMMA: Partly. But it’s more to do with my parents.
A: But they aren’t-
EMMA: Mutants? No. Worse. They’re hippies. Aging, pot-drenched flakes. They wander from commune to commune and can’t commit to more than a sentence. All this big anti-establish talk and yet neither one of them could even finish a bedtime story for their little girl.
A: And the fact that you were a born empathic…?
EMMA: Made no difference. They would have been freaked out if I’d just been a kid who could play the piano well. You see what I’m saying? With that kind of childhood I could never feel normal. Mutant or not.
A: But you don’t hate your mother and father.
EMMA: No, of course not. And I know they love me. I just don’t respect them. Any way, they didn’t really raise me in the end. I got shuttled between friends, cousins and finally my grandmother until I was out of school and old enough to be on my own.
A: Old enough?
EMMA: Well, my powers helped out a lot there. You can turn a lot of “no’s” into “yes’s” when you zap a pretty picture into someone’s head. Like I told you, I made a killing in retail. (A guilty giggle).
A: So why not just continue raking it in?
EMMA: Because it’s wrong. My parents might have been flakes but they did teach me the importance of privacy. If I kept pushing things into other minds I’m no better than those goons at Genomex.
A: I’m glad you’re here with us, Emma.
EMMA: I am too. Now. I wish there was more than one psionic on board though. I don’t want to let you down.
A: One last question. You’ve seen a lot of ugly thoughts in your young life and yet, you remain quite positive. How is that?
EMMA: I can share it with you, if you don’t mind.
A: Please do.
EMMA: I don’t know if this is a memory or a dream, but it always brings me strength.
(She empaths an image into my mind. It is of a warm, glowing field. The colors are vivid and unreal. Young, loving parents embrace a child in a white shift. A tranquil hum fills the air. Tears come to my eyes as it softly fades.)
EMMA: See?
:: End of Transcription
Emma #2 From Adam's interviews on Mutant X Lives
Emma has been through an emotional wringer lately. Manipulated by enemies and former friends, her empathic abilities have had to block out as many emotions as they’ve let in. Her attitude about her new powers also concerns me. I need to explore her recent leap from shrinking violet to tiger lily.
EMMA: This is going to be about Michele, isn’t it?
A: You’re scanning me?
EMMA: I don’t have to. She was bound to come up. We haven’t talked about her since she died.
A: Well, since you brought up the subject…
EMMA: Look. Michele was one of the few close friends I’ve ever had. Of course what happened to her is going to hurt me. You don’t need to be a telempath to figure that one out. We were two dorky girls growing up in Seattle. We made each other feel normal and it bonded us together. But obviously, we drifted apart. Look at the different choices we made.
A: Why do you think she went over to Eckhart?
EMMA: God, I wish I knew. Why didn’t I let my ethics slip just once and read her feelings before it was too late?
A: Because if you were that kind of person, you’d probably be working for Genomex as well. Try making a guess not as a Psionic but simply as Michele’s close friend.
EMMA: Then I’d have to say she was addicted to being a Telecyber. Those powers became all that mattered. (She starts to sob and takes a minute to dry her eyes and compose)
EMMA: Anything else you want me to wrench my heart over. I mean, as long as the waterworks are flowing…?
A: Caleb Mathius?
EMMA: What about him? He was a New Mutant vampire, Adam. I got caught in his team spell for a while. I broke out of it, didn’t I? God, Brennan left the team over that Insect Feral Cruella and you’ve barely said a word to him but---(A BEAT) Oh. You have. Sorry, sorry. Your thought was just too big for me to screen out.
A: It’s all right…this time. Speaking of your powers how are the new ones coming along?
EMMA: They’re so awesome! Do you know how great it feels to finally have a hard ball to pitch? I don’t have to stay in the background any more. I can fight up front with Shalimar and Brennan, pitching my psionic blasts in between their best shots!
A: Have you determined their range yet?
EMMA: Well, yesterday against those GSAgents I tried a straight emotional wash. Not only were they all in tears but Shalimar said she felt like crying…and was almost a block away!
A: Impressive. What other emotions can you spread besides the blues?
EMMA: Fear is easy. Rage, but who wants to spread that?
A: What about laughter? And joy?
EMMA: They’re a lot harder. In fact, I was going to ask you about that.
A: Maybe those feelings are more difficult to master because you aren’t as familiar with them yourself.
EMMA: Now who’s reading minds?
A: Of the four of you, Emma, your power increase has proved to be the most impressive…and dangerous.
EMMA: Do you think I can’t handle it? I told you, I’m not like Michele!
A: Why are you all so defensive these days? Is it Ashlocke? (No reply)
A: What I think is that we’ve worked long and hard on getting you to control your basic psionics. Just how was that accomplished?
EMMA: By getting me to focus on my own feelings inside of others.
A: So you do understand my concerns now that your abilities have received such a tremendous boost?
EMMA: Yes. And to tell you the truth, deep down they scare me too.
From Genomex.net, GENOMEX SECURITY FILE: MX999PDE DeLauro, Emma
Priority Clearance Only
UPDATED 5/30
The subject profiled is a member of the outlaw faction Mutant X.
This is the most recent recruit to Adam's crew of terrorists (see file #MX999AAA). She is a Psionic in her early teens/late twenties with the power of telempathy. DeLauro can read emotions and plant or manipulate them in others. While there are many in this classification, her abilities surpass the majority.
DeLauro is the child of two college students who were paid percipients in Genomex DNA experiments (via the Breedlove Institute). The result was a New Mutant offspring that neither had the responsibility to raise. Fostered or cared for by relatives, the Psionic was carefully tracked by the GSA throughout her youth and approached as an agent candidate when her empathic condition had matured and could be honed as a weapon. Once again, Adam's intervention kept her from becoming part of Genomex's security force and instead one of its more prominent foes.
Unlike her cohorts, DeLauro is not characterized as being aggressive or a dangerous physical threat. She is often employed in the background of an attack or as a tracker. This aside, HER MENTAL CAPABILITIES CANNOT BE UNDERESTIMATED. Many a GSAgent has fallen prey to this misconception and allowed themselves to be controlled by her psionic invasions.
Research has shown that the best method of felling a Telempath is to assault where they strike. Diseased images conjured in one's head should cause a ricochet effect, crippling them emotionally. There is a known vulnerability in all Psionics that causes them to tread a line thin between sanity and madness. As the subject has already demonstrated an inclination to separate contrasting aspects of her personality (see Dr. Harrison's file on the "DeLauro Split") it is suggested that a psychological counterattack may be the most effective way of subduing her.
DeLauro has little or no contact with her immediate family and use of close friends to turn her (see Personnel file on deceased GSAgent Michelle Bigelow) has proved futile. As it appears the Psionic's strongest emotional ties are with fellow Mutant X activists, injury to any of them should prove to be a powerful way to strike and disable her.
Mr. Eckhart has ordered that, above all Mutant X members, DeLauro is the most valuable and should be brought in with as little damage as possible.
This mandate remains in place UFN.
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