[application] for Babylon Wood

[not_myfirstday]

She cast her cloak and skin aside
She fought to claim her place.
It's true, the girl they speak of died;
She didn't leave a trace...

The Player
User Name/Nick: Christina
User LJ: lollobrigida
AIM/IM: onlysayinghello
E-mail: lollobrigida [gmail that]
Other Characters:

Faith Lehane - Buffy/Angel
Ruby - Supernatural
Paige Matthews - Charmed - I am dropping her, I just was trying to finish up one scene, but I think it’s dead in the water now. - Dropped!

The Character
Character Name: Elle Bishop
Character Journal: not-myfirstday
Canon: Heroes
Age: 24
From When?: Elle will be taken from the middle of Season three, toward the end of the episode titled: 3.07 Eris Quod Sum. Elle’s ability is shorting out, and she hasn’t been able to fix it. In order to remedy her problem, she goes to ask for Noah Bennet’s help, but instead ends up with Claire. The two of them travel to Pinehearst together, seeking answers. When they arrive, Peter is falling from the building and immediately Claire decides that this building is no good and that they need to get Peter out of there. Elle is debating. She is torn between deciding to go into Pinehearst and find out if they can help her or if she should return with Claire and Peter. I will be taking her from when she is standing there looking at Claire, unsure of what to do.

Abilities/Powers:
Elle has an electrical based ability. She’s an evolved human, so her genetic code has given her something a little special on the side. The main aspect of her ability is generating an electrical current. She can produce anything from a static-electric-type shock to a full EMP level burst. This energy is dispersed through her skin, but she has been trained to have it focused and directed through her hands.

I have likened her ability to be something of a second nervous system. Since she seems mostly immune to her own electrical output, I figured that it had to be something that developed with her body. Because she is constantly producing energy it had to be slightly passive, like blood flowing through veins. Her ability to produce high level outputs, also pushes me to think that she’s constantly in an on position, but that she can simply kick it up a notch when her fight/flight responses kick in.

Along with the electrical current comes the hints of such a level of power. I’ve often alluded to her having a natural hum about her, much like high-tension power lines. Also that she has a soft hint of ozone around her, due to the sparks that her ability often causes.

She’s also been trained as a Company agent. This means she has skills with handguns, tracking people, diversion tactics, and a small amount of hand to hand combat, though it’s possible she didn’t train as much in the hand to hand skills due to her ability giving her longer range offensive moves. She’s also very good with a pair of scissors (ie: Hair-cuts).

Power Limitations:

I don’t believe that she needs to have her ability limited. If she does, please make a request and I will accommodate that. However, I will point out that her current canon point does not have her completely in control of her ability. She will be having constant power fluctuations and this will continue until she can either “make a deal to fix it”, get Sylar to “fix it”, or someone else with the ability to help her through her grief and anger. She will need to stay away from water and metal.

Inventory
+ 1 Red Wool Coat - cropped length (above waist) with ¾ sleeves.
+ 1 Purple long sleeved shirt
+ 1 Pair dark blue jeans
+ 1 Hair tie
+ 1 pair small gold partial-hoop earrings
+ 1 black bra
+ 1 pair black cotton underwear
+ 1 shorted out cell-phone
+ 1 Pinehearst Business card
+ 1 pair tennis shoes (dark blue)
+ 1 pair black cotton socks
+ 1 pack of gum (for ears popping on the plane ride there)
+ 1 wallet with ID, credit cards, cash, etc. No personal photos.

Personality: From first glance, Elle seems like a perky blonde that has a good positive attitude and high self esteem. Her body language is often that of a seductress or vixen, leaning over and curling up aside people, as if this is something she simply assumes the other person won't mind at all. Her usual pattern of speech often gives the impression of talking down to everyone, with a lighter teasing tone behind most of her words. Generally, this is simply a defense mechanism to hide away the darker urges and motivations she knows she has within her.

Calling her a live wire would be putting it lightly, not just for the sake of her ability. She's unpredictable at times, and doesn't like to be told she can't do something, or that she's wrong. Most times, rather than deal with the consequences of how she feels about something she puts up a wall, shutting people out without hesitation, while outwardly she smiles as if nothing was wrong in the first place. It's easier for her to lie about being hurt than to actually express what is going on in her own mind.

Most of her formative years were done under the supervision of a psychiatrist. It's possible, that a lot of her lying and acting as if nothing is wrong is something that she learned early on in order to get out of talking to the shrinks. Especially, since it's apparent that she doesn't like to talk about herself. Even when Peter tries to show an interest in her, she still is extremely guarded, refusing to give him any details. Most of that is because she'd rather keep her distance, since that's what her training teaches her to do, but also because she's not sure anything that she could tell him would be even interesting enough for him.

Being raised by her father she is a Daddy's girl, always seeking his approval to the point where it is a dangerous level of attention that she needs. Her father instilled an extremely high standard to her, claiming she was 'better than everyone else' and Elle believes that she still is working to get to that point. She will push herself, and allow her ability to be pushed to extreme levels if it will get the desired results. That sort of commitment level is something she barely notices as dangerous, and her motivation behind going to that level is probably something she barely recognizes is wrong. Her ability to judge what is right from wrong is heavily blurred between those two lines. Because of this, she often doesn't think that she'll have to deal with the consequences and this makes her once more seem like she is above it all and, even worse, other people.

Deep down, she is still just a child; young, naive, and lacking so many of the memories that one relies on to actually grow up and learn from mistakes and experiences. Her social outings aren't even outings, as much as they are missions or tasks that her father gives her. The first time she could even make a friend, it's when she's tasked to do so with Gabriel Gray. She enters his shop, saves him from his own suicide, and makes a connection to another person. It's even something that she protects from her files, I think, because she never relays that Gabriel had been trying to kill himself. It's something that she protects from her job, almost as if she feels like she owes him that much. It could be forethought to the acts that she knew they were trying to get him to do, but it's one of the few times that she's shown to actively take someone else and their situation into consideration and it is a key element in her relationship with Gabriel and later Sylar.

Rather than deal with how her actions and the actions of others against her make her feel, once more, she puts on an act of someone more innocent and child-like thinking that was how she got away with things when she was little, and it should still apply now. The main disadvantage that gives her is that she didn't have the regular childhood, and most of her failures and times she was punished have been erased by the Haitian, in order to falsely give her father that ideal 'loving father' image. She thinks that when she was little things were good and that she made her father proud and that he loved her. She believes that it's only recently, now that she's been allowed out from under his wing, that she's begun to let him down.

She can be over bearing and push herself onto people even when it is clear that they are not comfortable around her. Using her sexuality and her physicality to get what she wants lends to a certain level of self confidence that is extremely false in nature. She knows she's pretty and that this can get her things in life. Her feelings get hurt very easily though, and her lack of understanding why people want to hurt her is completely lost on her. She tends to think she should get her way and when she doesn't much like a child she can act out, usually violently.

Her clinical diagnosis of sociopath with paranoid delusions not only ties into her moral compass, but the fact that her father, throughout her childhood, continued to put her through extreme experiments regarding her ability and wiped her memory of any negative effects they had on her. She is paranoid about being hurt, but she has no real idea why that is. She also doesn't trust her diagnosis, because she has no real reason to believe that her behavior is not correct for a girl her age. She simply thinks that they just don't understand her, and since she has no one else to compare her own behavior against - clearly, it's them just trying to make her look bad.

Almost everyone she ever cares about leaves her. Her mother died when she was young, her father emotionally abandoned her around the time she gained an ability, in order to maintain a clinical perspective on her testing, Gabriel Gray left and became Sylar, and even Peter who earns her trust and a kiss eventually walks out of the facility to go join Adam. Beyond that, every time she trusts someone they eventually fail her. From Arthur saying she was a good match with Sylar, to Sylar actually killing her. She lives with a constant fear of not being good enough, and that her failure will result in her being left alone. That level of loneliness probably reminds her of her childhood where she had no friends and was just a test subject for her father.

She is fully capable of learning from her own experiences, but hasn't been given the adequate time in canon to do so. It's almost as if every time something happens that she should react to happens, something even worse is forced onto her. Each time she fails at her job, and makes a mistake, she's not given much time to learn from what she did wrong, because she's given a new assignment. When her father dies, she's fired and her ability malfunctions. She does realize that what her father did to her was wrong, but it takes seeing how other families function (the Bennets) for her to even consider that something was wrong with her own life.

She's capable of love and deep emotion, but she might simply just not understand that is what she's feeling. There is no way to be taught these things and her emotional background is one of cause and effect, where when she does one thing it's rewarded with another. She wants to impress her father, so she does things that he wants in order to gain his approval. Most of the time that never comes, so her attempts all end up hollow and don't give her any benefit. The few times that she is given that positive reinforcement and is told that she did something right for a change, there is a definite shift in her features and her emotional well-being.

When she attacks Sylar and in essence saves the lives of others, she thinks that is cool. It lights up her face and she feels accomplished. When she finally gets Peter to actually ask her for a shock, she's nearly elated that he's accepting her for who she is. She's timid and nearly hesitant to hurt him because she doesn't want him to reject her. When he kisses her, she's nearly confident that he did it because he wanted to, which is much more important than him doing it because he needs to. She can't tell the difference and she accepts this act for something that makes her heart race and her breath grow short. She's immediately endeared to him and believes that this is how it is supposed to be with her and Peter. Of course, he leaves and she realizes that it was a trick, but for a moment there she thought she had something.

History: Note: Because the comic books, while providing new canon, often contradicted the existing canon, I do not use them in any aspect at all. I do not take anything from the comics, not even her middle name, because I feel that if I was to pick and choose what parts to use, it would be just as bad as how the writers treated their own continuity. I use everything that was given to me in the televised episodes as well as any bonus features contained on the DVD in relation to the TV series only. I do not count anything from the comics.

Also - I touch on her personality a bit in this section, because there are certain events that directly correlate to her personality traits. I also stop her history at her canon point, because beyond that point a lot of her motivations and personality traits shift slightly. Since I won’t be taking those into consideration, I didn’t want to add more into her history, since this was already quite long.

***

Elle Bishop is not your typical twenty-something year old girl from New York. Born with an ability, Elle had a dangerous gift that was not exactly commonplace for most people. The odds of being born with a genetic mutation that gave you a natural born ability, were so slight that there was only one man researching the concept publicly. Most of the people looking into the phenomena were those afflicted with the gifts themselves, trying to either mass-produce the same results or to stop them completely. There were still at least a hundred cases within the New York Tri-State area and in Elle’s case, her family was on the side that wanted to keep abilities secret, in order to use them for their own gain.

Her childhood was plagued with incidents that while, not her fault, still managed to shape her future along with her reputation. When she was four, her ability set her grandmother’s house on fire. Eight, she caused a blackout of several counties. It’s assumed that the stress of this danger pushed her mental awareness of these circumstances to an unexpected breaking point and she spent her ninth birthday with a lithium drip. (It’s also possible that this was simply to keep her calm and reduce the electrical output that she was dispersing. - I also have a personal theory that this was close to when her mother died and the loss, of that person, in her life caused her progress in controlling her ability to actually regress, and keeping her calm was the only way to keep everyone safe.)

Her ability kept her out of public schools, away from social interactions with people her own age and in no uncertain terms isolated her to the point that the only people she came into contact with were her doctors and her father. She lived within the medical facility of the Company, which was operating with the cover company of Primatech, a paper mill. The medical facility was located in Hartsdale, NY, and almost every employee of the Company had been through there at one point or another.

With only her father around, she grew extremely attached to him. He was the pinnacle figure to her future and her need to impress him and make him love her grew with each passing day. Of course, with each passing day Bob saw a new way to use his daughter as a testing ground for just how these abilities worked. Since she was born with hers, there was no eclipse needed to trigger it, no event that started it all. By being a purely genetic code situation, he allowed his employer to do whatever they saw fit and then some.

Noah Bennet (another employee of the Company) had often been around during the testing that Elle went through. His own personal recollection of it was not something of a father trying to be proud of his daughter, as Elle had perceived it, but as a father trying to get the most out of each test. Insisting that they continue pushing her beyond her limits, even to the point of her physically being unable to remain conscious. Elle, of course, would have no recollection of that. Which is most likely due to the ability of another evolved human. This one other individual is capable of removing memories.

She grows up with a very sheltered life. Her days are spent testing her ability and then later training her on how to properly use her ability. She’s being groomed for a position within the Company, at her father’s insistence. It’s as if he doesn’t want all the work he put into testing her and getting her to use her ability properly to go to waste. She’s given a partner in Noah Bennet. Someone that has seen her go through her training and understands how her ability works.

Her first assignment is supposed to be a simple one, though it’s clearly more than she is prepared for. Her lack of social skills and queues, upon meeting Gabriel Gray, shifts her focus quickly. Instead of her doing the job, she instead is endeared to him, being given the positive affirmation that she saved his life, which is a level of approval that she had never been given before. This creates a lot of confusion for her and she tries to back out of the assignment. However, her need for approval rises again and she follows through with her assignment and gets Gabriel Gray to lash out and steal an ability from another powered human.

From there, she is without a doubt a Company girl. She follows orders and does what she’s told, because she feels as if there really is nothing worse that she can do to another person. She holds onto the guilt, but she doesn’t really reflect onto it or grow from it. She just moves onto the next assignment. Her motivations are to impress her father and because of that she constantly pushes herself and her abilities to high levels.

After the Senate election, there is an incident in Kirby Plaza. It’s the sort of incident that gets covered up quickly and has very little press coverage. This is largely in part to the Company and their efforts to keep people with abilities as below-the-radar as possible. Two people from the incident however aren’t that easy to just cover up. One of them is the newly elected Senator Nathan Petrelli. His injuries are concurrent with someone that has been exposed to a nuclear blast. His burns are over most of his body and they are so severe that even skin grafts promise very little in means of healing. The other individual is his brother Peter Petrelli who is responsible for the explosion which puts his brother into the hospital.

Elle’s second main assignment is being given Peter Petrelli. She retrieves him from the hospital, using a bit of her own ability, possibly too much, but she doesn’t seem phased and helping convince him that he’s a danger to himself and others. Once she has convinced Peter that he needs to stay in the care of the medical facility in Hartsdale, she continues to supervise his care. She administers his daily medications, a pharmaceutical cocktail of pills that dampen Peter’s abilities (of which he has gained quite a few). She’s also put in charge of his grooming and she is well-skilled at cutting hair.

Peter keeps his distance and Elle becomes more and more curious about the male under her care. She grows fond of him and her attraction grows even more prominent. Aside from her early flirtation with Gabriel, Peter is the first male the same age as her that she has been in a semi-regular contact with. She tries to get his attention by using the only tactics she feels she can. Flaunting herself and using her one main asset, her appearance, to her advantage. She pressed close and tried to gain his trust by bartering his time for the “cure” she was offering.

After she shares a kiss with Peter, with him using her affection for him to his advantage, he flees the medical center. His escape adds yet another failure to Elle’s list of missions that she’s been assigned by the Company. While Peter flees with Adam, she’s determined to bring him back. Her father has doubts, but allows her to track him. She follows him to the docks, but is betrayed by her partner in the field when he sends Peter away in a freight container.

Elle continues on her mission, though. She tracks the container to Ireland and tries to interrogate people that might have seen Peter. She gains the information she needs, but when someone lies to her about Peter and his whereabouts, she opts to kill the man instead of leaving him alone. It’s her intention to send a message, but instead it just creates a mess for her father to deal with. When she lets him know about the action she took, he orders her to return home. Further pressing into her mindset that she has failed him again.

She continues to work for the Company, trying to prove herself to her father. She’s partnered with Mohinder, which only ends in her eventual kidnapping by Bennet. Bennet tortures her, which is where it’s revealed to her that her own father’s motives toward her were not always one of a loving parent. This is the start of Elle no longer believing that her father is worth impressing. Noah Bennet and Bob Bishop set up a trade for each other’s daughters and when Elle tries to make one final attempt to be the savior for her father and shoot down Claire, Noah Bennet reacts and shoots toward her. Another shot is fired which kills Noah Bennet. Her shoulder is shot and this injury further demotes her within the ranks of the Company.

With Noah Bennet presumed dead, she’s assigned to watch Claire Bennet, which she doesn’t do very discretely and she’s discovered by Claire herself. Claire makes a threat, to expose the Company, which once more makes Elle’s role in the Company less important, because she keeps messing up.

Once the threat has been made from Claire, Bob takes his daughter off of active duty. She’s no longer allowed in the field at all. Elle is remiss; even more determined to prove herself to her father. To make amends for all the things that she did wrong. She also wants proof of what Bennet told her, that her father had been testing on her and had her memory erased. When she’s in her father’s office, she finds that her file is missing. Hoping to find the information in her father’s computer she logs into his system and instead of finding her own file, she instead sees security footage of Sylar at the old Isaac Mendez loft. Once more, she wants to prove herself worthy, so she heads to the loft intending to bring back Sylar.

Instead, she ends up giving Sylar the opportunity for distraction, where he is able to steal the cure to the disease he had been given by the Company. Elle saves Molly, Maya, and Mohinder’s lives, but at the same time she also lets Sylar escape with a cure. Later, Bob shows her footage of Sylar killing Company agents. This is just another point of failure that her father points out to her. She tries to reason with her father, insisting that if he gives her another chance that she can bring him in. He insists that she will fail and that he won’t allow her to begin something that will end in disappointment for them both. He also reminds her of her need for approval, insisting that it only got worse after her mother died. (This to me states that she did have her mother in her life up until a point and it had to be a point in her maturity where she would actually need to seek approval. Most children don’t understand that concept, which is why I pair her mother’s death with her ninth birthday.)

When she returns to her father’s office to try once more to insist that she can do it, that she can get him Sylar by using the medical facility as bait, she instead is greeted with the fact that she was right and Sylar had come to Hartsdale. However, this also means that Sylar is in the building and her first sign of that is that her father is now dead.

She’s barely given any time to grieve or handle the loss before she has to act. She moves to Level Five, where Noah Bennet is still being held (per his agreement with Angela) and releases him, telling him that Sylar is in the building. The two try and bring down Sylar, but it is too late and he’s already gained Claire Bennet’s regenerative ability making him nearly unstoppable. He attempts to kill Elle and remove her power. The usual method that he does this is by slicing the top of the head open and examining her brain. However, with Elle, the pain is so severe that her body reacts to protect herself and she releases such a powerful burst of power that it not only sends Sylar off of her body forcefully, but it serves as an EMP and the entire cell block in Level Five is opened up. Countless hostiles with dangerous abilities (like Sylar or worse) are released and escape containment.

This breach and subsequent release of hostile and dangerous people into the general populace is the final straw for Elle’s career within the Company. With out her father around to protect her job Angela Petrelli, the new head of the Company, fires Elle. This is the first time that Elle would be without an actual purpose or motivation for any of her actions. Without her job, which she was trained for nearly her entire life, she had nothing to aspire to. With her father dead there was no one for her to appeal to and it left her not only unsure of what she had accomplished with her life so far, but without purpose or any future goals.

Without anything to do, Elle tries to move on with her life. However, the attack on her at the hands of Sylar has done something to her ability. In some way or another, she has lost control of her ability and it is in a state of constant flux. Nearly out of sync with her own body, her ability is now capable of hurting herself. This could be for a number of reasons, but my belief is that this is her own subconscious making her injure herself out of guilt and regret. It might have been triggered by the attack, and her subsequent release of that strong level of power, but there is no clear explanation of this. It could be just a side-effect of the release, but it makes more sense to me that this is her physical manifestation of her own guilt that she failed. It’s as if her body and mind are fighting against her, because she has not allowed herself to be okay with letting her father die. It is taking the notion of psychological punishment and putting it into an actual physical pain.

While her ability is causing her constant pain, she is approached by someone representing Pinehearst. She is told that they can help her, and fix what is wrong with her. Elle, not trusting what she doesn’t know, seeks out the help of Noah Bennet. In the past he always seemed to know everything, and Elle simply trusts that to be true about Pinehearst as well.

When Noah isn’t home, but instead it’s the rest of the Bennet clan, she tries to attack Claire, to force her to help by hurting her. However, something is wrong with Claire and she can no longer feel pain. Both of them agree to put aside their differences to visit Pinehearst, to see if this mystery company can live up to its promises. Both girls take a plane from Costa Verde, CA to New Jersey. The flight proves difficult for Elle, her fear of flying paired with her ability not working completely right, sends current through the plane, increasing the turbulence. Claire offers to allow Elle to release her surplus energy into her, since she can heal and won’t feel it. Elle, although distrusting at first, realizes they have no other choice and she does so. The act itself, allowing herself to trust someone else, grants her the relief she needs for the remainder of the flight.

The two girls rent a car and head to the Pinehearst building, expecting to find answers to their questions. Elle hopes to find a way to remove her abilities from her completely. (I believe that this is because she feels like they have constantly been something that’s turned her life against her. All of her attempts to prove herself to her father were futile and she associates her having an ability to the lack of actual love from her father.)

When they approach the building together, Elle’s ability has continued to disperse energy while they walk. It’s evident that her power fluctuations are becoming more annoying to Elle as they are still happening. They end up stopping just short of the doors, watching Peter Petrelli fall nearly to his death out of a window from a higher floor. Claire is convinced that because they do not know why he fell, that the building isn’t to be trusted. Elle is unsure, and just wants to be helped -- even if whoever is helping her doesn’t have the best motives. She turns, apologizing to Claire, and enters the building alone.

Her canon point is before she turns into the building making her choice.

First Person Sample: (this is long, but I thought it worked)

I was supposed to be following her. Keeping an eye at a distance. A safe distance, far away, so that I wasn't seen by her. After all, we told her she could live a normal life. How the hell was I supposed to know that she'd end up taking her father's "Ashes" to a secluded beach for that final farewell. It's hard to be covert when there isn't anyone else there. I mean, if there was a few more cars it could have worked. Maybe. I'm not exactly the field operative that they should send out for the delicate babysitting jobs. I'm more effectively used... doing other things that come a bit more naturally to me. So, I sat and watched the little funeral touching-service thing, complete with the windy farewell.

Really, if I die and get cremated; which personally, I think my goal is to be self-executioner and just go for the glory, and the gusto, and spark it up and see what happens. But when that does happen? Sure, I'd go for the nice, touching, tearful farewell. I'd expect a few people to be happy I'm gone, and then I'd sure hope to see a few of them a bit more... upset that I'm not in their lives anymore. Who am I to guess who those people would be though?

Still, I was supposed to just watch and wait; or... well probably just watch. I mean, as far as taking action Daddy wasn't too impressed with my previous attempts at getting things done. Peter was just a little trickier than the Cheerleader. Though, the cheerleader saw me from across the parking lot. It must be that whole ‘I can feel you looking at me’ thing, because I was sort of staring while enjoying my Slush-O. Then she was coming over, and I had the stupid sling on my arm, and my keys weren't in the ignition, and the Slush-O was apparently more important for some reason in my mind...

So, the icy drink in the lap, the keys not in the ignition, and I just gave up. I got out of the car and I tried to play it off as something of a coincidence. Which, obviously, it was not.

Then, she got all tough and in my face, and really I'm about a good half a foot taller than her, eight inches if I have the heels on, but she puts up some serious bark, and unfortunately she has the bite to back it up. Then, not only did I have to tell Daddy that I messed up the surveillance, but I also have to replace a pair of pants, and the driver side window on a Company owned car.

I could have just stayed at the entrance of the beach and waited for them to leave. Or used the cup-holder. Or not had the sling on while I was just sitting there. Or, hell, I could have jump-started the damn thing. I guess, I wasn't actually doing too good with the spur of the moment thoughts.

I guess, I’ll just have to work on that.

Prose Sample:

It wasn't even as if it was her own fault, but still she couldn't help but needle at the Bennet family while she was in their house. Her ability betraying her at every single breath and the only thing she knew she had control over was the bite in her words. Even that held a flinch in her features when her body reacted to the current that she couldn't control anymore. Everything was a lie, but it should've been something she was at least used to.

Her father was dead, her position within the Company discarded and any actual hold she thought she had on her ability had gone away weeks ago. Now she was tempted with a choice to head into a new building that had a lab and a powerful name behind the business card. Pinehearst had found her, sought her out with what they claimed could be the solution to her problem. The problem though was that she hadn't ever heard of Pinehearst, and that put new doubt into her mind about just what it was that they wanted with her.

Bennet always knew something, she figured that out early on. Now he seemed to be her only choice, and sitting in his house trying to figure out exactly how she was going to explain herself, and the burned out laptop in front of her was proving a difficult task. Instincts were always the easiest thing to rely on. Fight or flight, and she knew she had no where else to go at this point. No other path to choose and honestly no one else to go to at this point. She had the Bennet house, and she had Claire.

Claire; the girl that could heal, and had a father that cared so much about her that he allowed them all to believe he was dead, just to keep her safe. Claire that had the souvenir brought back from all the trips to wherever the lie took him. Claire who would heal no matter what damage was done to her.

It seemed the perfect solution in her mind. Unleash the ability that she hadn't been able to control and siphon some of it out of her... away from her just so that maybe it wouldn't hurt anymore. It all came through her and out of her palms and around her fingertips pushing from herself into Claire. The way the girl looked back at her, the cold unfeeling grin of someone that didn't seem to care... didn't seem to realize how much that should've hurt looked so familiar to her.

That split second it took to recognize that sort of darkness was enough of an opportunity for Claire to take advantage and then she was being pulled into the other room. The slight struggle and more of her energy was forced toward the girl now on the ground. She wanted the pain to go away, she wanted to just make it stop but she couldn't stop it at all. It was always part of her and now it was more than just a part of her, it was all she seemed to be.

The water was cold as it cut across her shoulder and over her neck. It soaked into her shirt and dampened her hair as it cascaded over her clothing. The conduit that she knew she was now had something to let the energy cling to, it didn't run through her like it should've done before... it hovered around her skin and stayed close like the water itself was doing. What little avoidance of pain she could bear from her ability before was gone as she slunk down against the counter. Her shoulders pressed to the wall and the back of the cabinet, cowering in pain knowing that even if she could draw herself in smaller that it still would hurt just the same.

That it would always hurt... because it was never going to stop.

Special Notes:


Revisions - 1ST PERSON - to be used as an intro to the journal comm

Hel-- [there's a flicker of electricity that sparks across her skin] Sonuva-bitch! [the voice cuts short with a wince as she whimpers a bit, trying to tense her arm so that the pain isn't quite so bad]

This really sucks. [swallowing hard, she tries again, trying to breathe through her nose and relax. The thought is that if she relaxes maybe it'll stop. Just for a bit.]

Is anyone even ou- [aaand zap!] Ow-how-Ouch!! Out there! Jeeze, is anyone out there?

I don't know how long this thing'll last in my hands before I fry it.

[setting her jaw, she breaths in sharply through her nostrils, and prepares to talk really fast]

My name's Elle Bishop, and I'm stuck in the middle of who-knows-where, and I have no clue how I got here; I swear I was just in New Jersey two seconds ag-[and a pop of electricity crackles over the video screen and she winces in response]-oh-sonuva bitch! That is not getting anymore amusing.

Annnd because I realized after I wrote it that, she's coming in from a painful canon point and that might not be the best example, but it is pretty much how she'll interact with people until she's fixed... a second 1st Person is here:

Does anyone just randomly think of something they wish they could eat? I mean, right now. Right now, there's something that your body wants, something it craves.

The human body does weird things when it wants things, too. [smirks] Everyone better start being careful, those cravings might overpower you.

We should try and find multi-vitamins. [she's nodding along with her idea] That could solve everyone's problems.

Plus, it'd lower my risk for osteoporosis and brittle-bone disease.

I don't want to die in these woods with a hunch-back, worrying that I'm going to trip over a branch and shatter my pelvis.

Revisions - 3RD PERSON

The cell phone had buzzed at his hip and she watched him carefully as he glanced to the caller ID. The words echoing in her mind about how she wouldn't understand his need to prove himself still left a bitter taste in the back of her mouth. She knew exactly how that felt, the drive and need to push ones self to that next plateau, to be more than just good but the best. Fat lot of good it had done her, she'd made her life the Company line and ended up getting dropped as soon as her usefulness, or lack there of had expired. Angela had all but told her she was worthless when she'd told her that she wasn't needed at the Company anymore. Not being able to understand what he felt might have made it easier for her to just stand by and do nothing.

He probably felt her watching him, too closely, too much or just listening to him being such a good son that he stepped outside to finish whatever couldn't be said in front of her. It didn't matter, she drummed her fingertips across the counter thinking about just how exactly she could wake him up to what he was falling victim to. No one had shown her that she was being used, and now Gabriel was even trying to keep her out of the way, keep her from doing the one thing she actually knew she how to do.

Glancing over her shoulder she knew he was going to be out there a while, that was what always happened when her father would call to check on her. Not a lot of talking from her side of things, just a lot of listening and taking advice and trying to prove just what a good daughter she could be. She heard the sound from the back room and she tensed up, putting a bit of fear in her eyes and kept glancing over her shoulder.

"Sorry, I didn't hear the door chime."

He was sort of sloppy, and really didn't fit what she needed in the moment, but he'd do at the very least.

"Oh God. Thank God... please you have to help... the man... he's outside now I think he's calling his partner. I saw him on the news a while ago, he's a serial killer. I didn't realize it until I tried to get away from him. He grabbed me and I think he's going to hurt me, please you have to help! Before he comes back!"

The stunned look was there in his eyes, and Elle tried her best to play the deer in the headlights struck by fear for what Gabriel might do to her, if he really was the serial killer he used to be... the one she made him into. It took him a few moments to let it all register and click into his mind and then he was nodding and trying to reassure her.

"Stay here... I've got a shotgun, and I'll-I'll call the cops..."

"Don't leave me," she pleaded, her eyes wide with fear.

"S'alright... I'll just be a minute, I gotta grab the shotgun..."

She nodded keeping her eyes on him until he took off into the back room. Rolling her eyes Elle sighed a breath of relief, the cops were a bit drastic, and calling a bit too much attention, but at least it would be an immediate response. It'd force his hand, and make him do something for himself for once. They had all this power, and he was trying to be "responsible" and do the right thing. Renting a car instead of taking it, checking in with dear old Dad... the one that had opted to chain her to the floor rather than actually fix her like they'd promised when they came to find her. The one that took Peter's abilities and showed him that the only option out of there without signing up for the game plan was out the window. She didn't trust Arthur, and the fact that Gabriel seemed so willing to please... he needed to make a choice for himself, or he'd be stuck forever trying to live up to expectations that were too high. It didn't have to be that way, living in the shadow of what the son Arthur wanted should be. He could be his own man, doing his own things, calling his own shots, because he had that power.

He could take what he wanted.

He could be what he needed to be for no one but himself.

He didn't have to be what everyone was forcing him to be... making him into something they wanted to see if he was capable of becoming.

Elle knew that Gabriel could be Daddy's Hero, doing the right thing, playing by their rules and making sure that everything was going to go according to plan - or he could be someone else. He could be who he wanted to be, who he felt right being, and finally realize just how much he could have if he actually wanted to take it all back. He'd have a choice to make, and she'd make sure he realized just who he was making that choice for, even if she had to pretend to be the victim of a horrible future if something wasn't done. He'd see what was really at stake... and just how easy it would be to make a choice for himself for once, instead of for everyone else.

The door chimed and Elle turned to look at him, asking the question she already knew the answer to. Arthur was on the phone, and Arthur had tips and suggestions and ways to make sure that his son was being the very best that he could be. Playing that loving father trying to ensure a future for his prodigy. If anyone was lying, and pretending to be something they weren't Elle had to trust that it wasn't just her playing the victim these days. She was giving herself a much bigger part, because she knew she could take it.