fandomhigh | Powers, Identity, and The World; Embracing the Real You

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powers and identity

Powers, Identity, and The World; Embracing the Real You - Friday, Period One

When the students filed in for class today, they would find themselves stepping into a typical classroom, desks neatly arranged, with two teachers standing at the front of the room. One of them had his arms crossed over his leather-wrapped chest and was looking over the students thoughtfully. The other was a girl in her early twenties, dressed in a simple blue sweater and dark jeans. She kept fidgeting with a necklace around her neck, specifically with the pendant, which appeared to be two rings.

It was the thoroughly leather-wrapped man who spoke first, because what better way to break the students into having a class about powers than by kicking off the first lesson with telepathy?

//So, as you lot might have gathered, today's class is about powers. And identity.// A beat. //And the world. Which is pretty much what it sounds like on the tin, if you get right down to it. Over the course of the semester, we'll be exploring the impact that having powers might have had on who you are, what the rest of the world might think of you, and how it all ties together. As you might have guessed, we'll be teaching from experience. Last I checked, there weren't exactly textbooks on this sort of thing.//

“If there were, we’d probably throw them out,” the dark-haired girl said. “We’re also going to be talking about who you are, as a person. The word ‘you’ includes your powers, because that’s who you are, but that isn’t all you are. You have interests, friends, wants, needs. You have a favorite color, pet peeves, a secret crush. You’re a complete being. Never forget that. What your powers are may be part of it, but they can only ever be part.”

//Today, we're going to… do that thing you've all got to be sick of by now,// Jono said, shrugging his shoulders. //But at the very least, once we get this out of the way, you won't have to do it for the rest of the semester unless you have other Friday classes. Introductions. I'm Jonothon Starsmore. I'll grudgingly answer to Professor Starsmore if you insist, but I much prefer Jono, or Jon. My power ought to be at least partway obvious by this point,// he tapped at the side of his head, //and I've got a good deal of experience with the world around me expecting me to be defined by what my mutant genetics allow me to do, because besides the telepathy, I'm a walking force of flaming destruction. But… besides all that? I was Prom King my graduating year, and I run the music shop in town. Wanted to be a musician growing up, actually. Still play the guitar from time to time.//

That was relevant to the introductions, yes. They would get to that part in a minute.

“My name’s Rinoa Heartilly, and you can just call me Rinoa,” the girl said, calmly. “I own the Magic Box. When I was seventeen years old, I became a Sorceress. No one here seems to know what that means, but I have nearly limitless arcane power at my fingertips. The difficulty is not getting lost in it, whenever it gets out.”

She lifted her shoulders. “But that’s not all I am. I also have a dog named Angelo, and she’s a trained rescue puppy. I own the Magic Box store downtown. I’ve been dating Squall, the grumpy guy who owns the comics shop, for years now, and he’s really taking his time proposing. I love reading. I’ve been restoring an ancient library, back home, and it’s really fascinating stuff.”

Rinoa looked around the room. “It’s your turn,” she said. “Like Jono said, we’re doing introductions. You can talk about what powers you have if you want, but you don’t have to. That’s not what we’re interested in, right now. What we want to know is, who are you? What’s something you love, and something you hate? What are your hobbies? What’s something interesting about you, the person you are outside of whatever powers you have?”

//In fact,// Jono added, //during the course of this semester, you are never, under any circumstances, going to be required to tell us about your powers. Which brings us to the rules for this class. We don't have many, and the ones we do have all boil down to your personal comfort, and to respect. Nothing anybody discusses in this room leaves this room, unless the person doing the sharing brings it up outside of the classroom themselves. It's nobody's bloody business what we can do, not until we decide it ought to be. Most of you, I'd wager, are already well aware of why.//

“If you’re ever asked a question you don’t want to answer,” Rinoa offered, “it’s simple. You say that you don’t have any powers and you must be in the wrong class. That’s it. It doesn’t matter if last week you were talking about your telekinesis abilities; this week, you don’t have powers and you’re in the wrong class. That’s the universal sign for ‘drop it, I don’t want to talk about it.’ And if you really are unpowered and did end up in the wrong class, you’re welcome to stay, so long as you have respect for everyone around you.”

//After introductions, we'd like to talk a bit about what you're hoping to get out of this class,// Jono added, nodding in agreement with what Rinoa said. //If it's a better understanding of people with powers because you're in the wrong class, excellent. Be respectful of your classmates. If it's a better idea of how to balance your identity with what the world expects you to be or fears you are, good, let us know. We'll do our best through the semester to accommodate. And with that… we're opening the floor.// He waved a hand at the class at large. //Whoever wants to kick this off, please, do.//

[OOC: ~~Please hold for OCD!~~ Open!]

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"It's safe, here," Rinoa said gently. "It's okay that you don't know how to talk about them. Is it that you don't understand what exactly they are? I don't have a lot of information about my abilities, either. I've been doing my own research, but most of what you find about Sorceresses -- there's a lot of propaganda out there, either Pro- or Con-."

She lifted her shoulders. "If you want to explore what you can do, we can cover that in class," she offered. "If it's something you understand, but don't want to talk about? That's okay, too. And I highly recommend getting a dog. Angelo's been the one thing keeping me sane, these past few years."

Sometimes literally.

"That, yes." Hanna paused, because this was the part that was emotionally difficult. "My father did not tell me of them as I grew up. I found-- a report? A chart. On my DNA. It was altered before I was born." She didn't shrug, but the air of helplessness was almost tangible. "The people who did so wanted a soldier. But I am not a scientist, I don't understand what it says. Or how much they succeeded, or if it was because my father trained me..." Her voice trailed off, got smaller. Anything else about Erik Heller would get the I may be in the wrong class response.

"Propaganda," she repeated. "That is all I have. Aside from the report." She took a breath. "Elsa's dog Canute is wonderful, and I must talk to my roommate about pets. A kitten would be nice as well, I think. I do not know if Carmilla would agree."

"So they changed you," she said. "But you've always been you. I mean, it would help to know what they did, to your DNA, and I'm sure you want to know what it is that you are. I do. That's why I go digging for all of these old reports that haven't been destroyed."

She bit her lip. "But in another sense -- what helps is to remember that I decide who and what I am. Not some write-up on Sorceress abilities. Not my powers. Not my DNA. Me. I'm Rinoa Heartilly, and I alone decide what that means day to day. What you are, they may have tinkered with, but who you are is up to you. Does that make sense?"

Hanna relaxed a tiny fraction, and nodded. "Yes." She considered that, and added, "That is part of why I am here, in Fandom. I need time. If I return home--" Yes. Time, she was pretty sure no one would give her, to figure things out. She shook her head. "Were you afraid, when you first knew?"

Lack of empathy was one of the traits that was suppose to be increased in herself. What did that mean?

"Terrified," Rinoa said. "I was scared of who I was, what it meant. I was scared that I wasn't me any more. Scared I might hurt people, scared people would hate me, scared of my own shadow."

She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "I was lucky," she said. "There was another Sorceress, older and wiser, that I could look to, as a mentor. She taught me how to control my powers, and myself, and how to be okay with who I am. So I'm -- that's part of why we're teaching this class. Because a lot of you are in that same position, confused, frightened, and in need of a mentor figure to tell you that it's going to be okay."

She offered a soft smile at that. "And it is."

Something very small inside Hanna tightened in relief, hugging herself. "Thank you," she whispered.

Even if she had been created not to have fear, it was not unreasonable to be afraid, Rinoa seemed to be saying. But the feeling did not have to last forever.

Eleanor hesitated. She shouldn't get involved, shouldn't talk about this, shouldn't ask --

"Do you still have the chart?" she asked. "Do you know what it said? I might be able to help."

She shrugged, a bit sheepishly. "I don't -- know if this makes you feel better," she added, "but -- my DNA was altered, too. When I was five, and then more when I was a teenager."

Presumably not in the same ways, as she doubted ADAM had made its way to the surface, but -- maybe it helped knowing she wasn't the only one.

Hanna's eyes snapped to Eleanor's like a missile-tracking system, but without the blankness; it was hopeful interest, almost desperation there.

"Yes. I-- it is all chemical names. Molecules. Adenine, thymine, guanine. I could show it to you, if you think you would understand it." Hanna had relaxed a little as Eleanor spoke. "How did they do this?" She wasn't even clear on the process. Had it hurt her mother? Those pictures of mice, with ears growing on them, from the internet-- had it been like that? "For you, I mean. There is no one to ask, for me. Why did they do it?"

Eleanor's they, or Hanna's. She was mystified about it on all levels.

"I'm not sure how much I'll understand," Eleanor said, shrugging a bit, "but I can try."

She exhaled messily. "How they did it was different, for me. It was surgical. There's -- I'm not sure I'm entirely human, any longer. My DNA was spliced with something else's."

Something that was still alive, in her stomach, but she'd rather not say that out loud in class if she could help it. It was grotesque, and she worried that people would look her differently once they knew.

"They did it for money," she answered. "In my case. They did it because doing it helped them. Maybe your scientists thought they were advancing the human race, or maybe you were created from birth to play a specific role in something larger than you. But for me, once I was like this, I could make someone else a lot of money, and they had little enough scruples to give a damn."

She hoped Hanna hadn't been expecting a noble answer, or a non-cynical one. She was trying her best. But maybe the girl would rather know, regardless.

She would much rather know. She had her suspicions; Marissa Wiegler was not a philanthropist, after all. But the politics were beyond her, so the human motivations had to be scrutinized.

"I am sorry that they created you for their own greed." Hanna bit her lip. "Someone called me a freak once. I don't know if they were wrong. The project was discontinued in 1996, when I was a toddler. The records were ... wiped, or burned, or destroyed." She tilted her head at Eleanor, curious, but not sure that asking more questions would help. And given the directives of the instructors, prying would be rude. A general question would hopefully not hurt, though. "You escaped them? And came here?"

"I've called myself a freak, too," Eleanor said. "I'm sorry someone said that to you. It's not -- right, of them to judge you for something that happened to you. But it doesn't make you feel any less --"

She gestured, in a futile attempt to wrap words around her thoughts. She still felt like a freak, no matter how many times people reassured her she wasn't. People had to say nice things like that.

"Do you know if the records had back-ups?" she asked. "It might be worth looking into, if you need to know what happened."

She could understand the urge. Curiosity could be strong, especially when you were curious about your own self and body.

"I did escape, yes," she said, carefully. "There were a number of people keeping me locked up. They were disinclined to set me free, but I was ... rather more determined."

She was trying not to say, openly in class, that she had murdered most of the people between her and the nearest exit. But hoping Hanna could piece together the clues enough to understand that that was, in fact, what she meant.

"Those are the names of DNA nucleotides," Kathy said. "I, umm, hope you don't mind me butting in, but I could at least answer that for you. They're three out of the four base pairs that make up your DNA. Adenine and thymine link together, as does guanine and cytosine."

Hanna turned and frowned. "So the changes they made... they were chemical? Not surgical?" She was thinking hard here. "So... perhaps an increase or decrease of something, but not... oh, an addition of new parts?"

"Well, I certainly can't speak for everything they did or didn't do," Kathy said hastily. She ducked her head a little, as if Hanna's words were an accusation. "Everything on earth shares those same two base pairs in their DNA, just in different chains. So, for all I know, they might have grafted DNA from different creatures to you, or fiddled with your overall DNA structure. I recognized the names, but anyone who could fiddle with them is operating waaaay above what I can do. I don't even know how I work, you know?"

"Oh," Hanna said, blinking into the blizzard of words. "I... suppose?" And of course not everyone would automatically know any more than she did about DNA, just because they recognized the names. She gave Kathy a sheepish look. "Thank you for explaining that much, though. Anything is better than nothing."

"I'm sorry I don't know anything more," Kathy said. "I didn't mean to get your hopes up or anything. I mean, I'd be happy to look over that paperwork you mentioned? But I'm not sure how much help I'll be." She thought it over and said, "I know someone on the island who can probably read it without an issue, though. I can ask him to take a look at it, if you'd like?"

"Is he a doctor?" Hanna frowned, biting her lip. "Or-- a soldier, or something?" The latter would get a firm no thank you if it came down to it.

"No? Well, he probably has his MD or something by now. I wouldn't be surprised," Kathy said, shaking her head. "No, he's a student, like us. Only ridiculously, incredibly smart. He's a scientist, more than anything, really."

She nodded. "Elsa's boyfriend."

She'd seen Elsa and Hanna waving at each other, so hopefully that would help.

That was reassuring. Someone their own age, but smart, would not necessarily think that Hanna was someone to be experimented on further. And the connection to Elsa helped; she wouldn't be dating someone who would be cruel or thoughtless, right?

"Okay." Hanna nodded. "I shall bring a copy next week, or sooner, if you think he would have the time."

No worries about that, Hanna. Kathy and Eleanor were both on his Ethics committee to make damn sure he didn't get any terrible ideas. Like experimenting on people, say.

"I can poke him about it and see," Kathy offered. "If he's interested, if he has the time? He does get caught up in his own inventions a lot."

Or brokering peace with space aliens or whatever.

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Powers, Identity, and The World; Embracing the Real You - Friday, Period One

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