DreamLyrics™ Play-by-Post Forums Alternate Reality PHX: Phoenix Reform Academy Girls common room.

Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken

Cadence was about to say that she needed to get some air, when a pop sound was heard, and there was a change to a mirror. Cadence was defensive inn a heightened state and she wheeled around to figure what fresh hell was happening now.

A face in the mirror, and at leAst this time, the others seem equally surprised.

Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken

Cadence moved to join the others. She kept her attention on new intrusion. The fact that the others were surprised by the girl's appearance was equally alarming and comforting to Cadence. At least she wasn't the only one caught off-guard.

"No reason the play Cheshire Cat... We're all mad here, right?"

Carmen

The tv’s speaker springs to life and a voice starts coming out of it.

“Um, sorry to startle you. Just. Um. Had to at least try to meet you. I mean, having a … half cousin? Around and never seeing them, well. Curiosity kills cats and Carmen. And, well, it can get a bit lonely in this house with a bunch of kids my age and no contact. I mean, mom might not entirely want me to do this but well, I mean, I am her daughter right? She can’t expect me to be good at following rules any more than she is and …”

She finally takes a breath in her stream of consciousness babble.

“Um, sorry. Carmen. Saraceno.”

Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken

Cadence glanced sidelong at the other girls to see their reactions. She figured she would follow along with the group-think on the situation for now.

"Half cousin? Is that really a thing?"

Carmen:
The others are mainly looking back with a ‘I don’t know’ shrug

“Well. By my reckoning my mother is your mother’s half sister, so if I’m the daughter of your half-aunt I’m a half first cousin? Not sure what you call it. Genetics makes my head explode. Anyway, thought I’d zap in here and at least get a solid look at you. I mean, I’ve spent so long with only mom that I’m a bit curious about other relations.”

Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken

"Cousins... No need to make it any harder than it already is."

Cadence nodded to the others to relax.

"Mariel's daughter right? And just so we're on the same page... Alchemy is the woman who gave birth to me, she killed my mother, the woman who raised me. My father too... In fact she killed half the town I grew up in. She's not my mother. That word means love. I have none for her and she's incapable of it."

Carmen:

“Yeah. I get that. Never any wish to meet her, or Nyx. After all, she’s the reason I have just mom but no dad. So she can go straight to hell.”

Her tone never changes while saying it.

“But I figure you’re as much her victim as anyone, more than that after hearing about your parents. I’m not violent, but I’d gladly ride the lightning if it meant frying her.”

Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken

Cadence looked at Carmen for a long moment. She understood the intent and idea of Carmen's words. But killing someone else, seeing them die, knowing you did it... Finally Cadence shook her head.

"I hope to God you never have to find out what that really means," she whispered in the quiet between them. "It's a lot to carry."

Carmen:

“You sound like mom.”

She pauses a moment.

“She always says that I shouldn’t be in a hurry to take on adult issues, and innocence is something to be cherished. And that once you’ve lost it there is no going back.”

Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken

"I guess being who ya'll are, and who your mother is, and all that goes along with that... and this place... knowing that all us Broken Toys are here... well, that's gotta be hard. But... Mariel's right. I wish I could take it all back."

Cadence looked at the others nodding that she felt everything was okay. All of them had been here longer than she had, but maybe being the captain of her high school's cheer squad made her more direct and protective.

"I'm Cadence. So, you joining us... like, come out of the TV and really join us?"

In a flash of what was - to cadence - really bright purple, she appeared, the purple dissipating as she solidified while simultaneously the lights dimmed then brightened again. There was a bit of a popping noise and the room warmed slightly.

“Erm. Sorry. I’ve tried to make going back physical from purple less dramatic but there appears to be some leakage whatever I do. I think internalizing all of it would probably be bad. Have to … erm … makes sure the same amount of…”

She pauses and waves her hands around a bit.

“… purple and stuff and zap goes everywhere.”

Dash is merely blinking and holding on to Cadence.

Ki is meanwhile looking back and forth between the two as if looking for a resemblance l

Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken

Cadence watched Carmen manipulate energy and matter and the transition in-between. It was like watching new ways to use her own powers. There was a similarity to Alchemy in that Carmen could shift herself in and out of an energy state and move cohesively along conductive pathways. She wondered if Carmen could also move like lightning. across open spaces as Alchemy could?

Cadence slipped her arm around dash to side-hug her a little closer.

"You're safe," she whispered. And Cadence then caught Ki's looks back and forth between Carmen and herself. Carmen was brunette(if the eyebrows were any indication) and Cadence was a blonde, but maybe there was some similarities.Was the blue hair thing real, natural, or something she chose? She shrugged before turning her attention back to Carmen. She regarded her a moment, imagining how she might be able to help carmen achieve her transistions with... hmmm...

"Apparently I was made to be an expert on purple and stuff and zap."

Carmen winces a bit.

“Sorry, I don’t have the vocabulary to describe things better. It’s weird. And sometimes feels a bit like I’m about to ride a bucking bull. Mother would probably rather I use it less. Still, I have a feeling that if I don’t use it , it’s gonna use me. And it would be a bit like not breathing. It’s a part of what I am.”

Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken

"I'm not raggin' on ya," Cadence added.

"I actually like the phrase... purple and stuff and zap. It's better than any sciency words written by people who have no idea what is actually going on."

She shrugged, "So, yeah... I like it. Anyway, your mother is right... and wrong... The more you use it, the more you'll want to use it, but if you don't figure it out and control it... then it will use you... no doubt. Or, someone else might come along and make you use it for what they want if you can't stop them."

Carmen

“I mean, I imagine it’s a bit like her.”

She motions towards Dash.

“Just look at her. I mean, it’s mixed. The hose is turned on full throttle whatever she does, even if sometimes she tries to pinch the hose and slow it down. She’s sitting still and I can see it vibrating her. It’s like a live wire, no ground. I don’t think I’m like that, but I can kinda … feel a charge running through my skin like static. Like I was a nine volt battery and if you touched your tongue to the leads you would get that tingly sensation. It’s sitting there, itching to go at the starting block. When I do something with it, the itching relieves. When I don’t, the tingle grows more annoying. If I can make anything of that than … I’m sorry.”

She looks at Hadassha.

“You got dealt a card I wish I couldn’t begin to imagine.”

She looks back to Cadence.

“With mother, she seems to have pretty good control of the flow, can turn it on or off. You -“

She thinks for a while, squints her eyes.

“I mean, I can kinda see things sitting there as potential, and it’s a wide hose, but it doesn’t seem to be bursting at the seams, you know? And here again my analogies jump off the deep end. I’m not good at analogies.”

She wrinkles her nose.

“I guess I’m saying that if I bleed it off a little at a time, the pressure relieves harmlessly. If I let it go a long time and build? Don’t know. I don’t do that. Find little ways to siphon things off.”

Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken

"Carmen... You aren't wrong, I guess. But it isn't your words that are lacking. What I think is missing for you is perspective. You don't see what I see, what I really am... What I was made to be. Every second of every day I exist in four states of 'purple and stuff and zap'. I have to focus to limit myself, where others have to focus to see the purple and stuff, just like you did with Dash and me."

"I can't turn it off. I can limit it, narrow it down, in order to keep sane, but once Alchemy awakened my powers and made me connect with them, I became a conduit, a meeting place of matter and energy, the real and the dark, the purple. I can channel and manipulate energy and matter, converting them from one to another. I can gather massive amounts of energy and unleash it across the sky, like deadly purple lightning for the world to see." That last was a thinly veiled reference to the deadly battle near the blackgate prison where she hung in the sky as Forsaken, doing her Mother's bidding in the battle against other supers, a pawn to a deeper plan her mother was unveiling that night.

"Each of you are specialist in a way, your powers work in a way that mine doesn't... not yet. Maybe not ever, or maybe when I figure out how it is your powers work, and how her powers work. You see, you can bridge the divides and the order of flow between them in a specific way, energy to matter and back the other way, using dark energy and dark matter as a bridge... My analogy sucks too."

"Anyway, I can learn those things and do them, I think, but right now I have certain 'rules' that keep things from glitching. You and Dash and others... You break those rules that I see in front of me as plain as we see each other. Dash let me look at her deeper and I know she's out of phase with the Dark Energy she's using to to change matter to energy. You see that as vibrating. Glitching.

I don't glitch. I think that's because my mother chose someone to be my father that solved a problem this inky-do guy hasn't been able to figure out. But it locks me into a set order of moving things. Like I said, I might be able to work around that as I learn more about everyone here. For now I wear an anklet that may or may not work on me... I promised not to test it."

"I'm not sure I'm making a lot of sense right now though."

Carmen:

“So … does that mean we can’t figure some things out? I would think each person would be a piece of your puzzle. How we break those ‘rules’ means something, right? I mean, if we break a rule, then it isn’t a rule, not really. Or at least it means there is more to the rule than you know. Each of us is a puzzle piece for your puzzle.”

Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken

"It's not my puzzle. It's not about me. I was built for a specific reason. A specific plan. Maybe. I don't know. Whatever was done to me worked out. I became what they wanted. Maybe ya'll didn't. Some of ya'll were tossed aside. But cruel F***s don't care. Sociopaths don't feel anything for anyone. Not everything works for ya'll. Maybe I'm not the puzzle. Each of you is might be like a messed up code... and maybe I can be the cypher."

Cadence looked at them all, and then at Hadasha. "I think I can help you... maybe just a little. Help you find some balance and maybe some control. But..."

She hefted the book that Mariel had given her. "I have read everything I can find about this kind of science but it was all written by people who can't see what I see or do what we do. This book... this book is different. And I have to learn it... fast."

"And, if I can help anyone here... I will."

Carmen:

She tilts her head.

“So, how can I help you out?”

Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken

Cadence shrugged.

"I don't know yet."

She hefted the book again. "...gotta read this first. But... Maybe just hang out with us when you can. You know, watch TV, talk... whatever. I haven't felt human, like a real person... I don't know, in a long time it seems. Your Mom's decent to me... The others watch me like they think they might have put me down like a rabid dog or something. Don't blame 'em. Even before that night, I wanted someone to put me down."

Carmen

She nods somberly.

“Way I see it, you’re as human as me. You aren’t … them … because you care if you are them. If that makes sense. Mom can’t really contain me if I don’t want to be contained. I mean, she says she's going to have to start teaching me to really let loose at some point, or I’m going to just figure it out on my own.”

Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken

"Your mother ain't Alchemy... or Nyx, so there's that. The family tree might have some bad branches, but the whole thing doesn't need to be cut down. Be good to her. I bet she knows you want to learn more and do more," Cadence intoned. "But, she also knows the horrors what can happen. If she's making mistakes, it's because she loves you and she knows what it looks like when it goes wrong... first hand."

Cadence shrugged.

"But keep 'reminding' her that you need to learn more and that you're ready to help her. She needs to feel that, and not just hear it."

She wrinkles her nose.

“Thanks.”

She motions around.

“You seem to be collecting quite the Menagerie yourself.”

Dash smiles slightly but says nothing. Ki … makes a giggle from nowhere.

Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken

Cadence shrugged. "I'm not collecting anyone. I'm the new kid in school. But I was a cheerleader so I always join in with the cool kids."