Black Mercy (Origin Story)


Aleksander

 

Posted

These days, most mutants aren't looked upon with fear and trepidation in Paragon City. However, in other places, such unnatural formations of the human genome are still viewed with paranoia, even outright hatred. Some become Heroes out of necessity or some moral upbringing.

Others aren't quite so.. 'fortunate'.

Such is the tale of Black Mercy, the woman now known on the Rogue Isles as her true name, Talynn Black. A mutant born with the ability to control and harness a number of energy fields to varied ends, her powers did not come into full bloom or even understanding until her teens. While her parents weren't exuberantly rich, it was still enough to have seemingly a good life. Talynn was a beautiful young woman, popular with her classmates and well into the different dating games and circles that most young people tend to. That is, until her mutant powers began their public manifestation.

For quite some time, Talynn had been keeping it hidden--in fact, from the age of 14 to 16, her ability to put out an resonate energy field that would render her invisible to all senses had been closely guarded. The fact that her hands could push out glowing energy was also kept hidden, though too many times there were seemingly close encounters that Talynn believed she'd been found out. Because in the small community that Talynn was growing up in, anti-metahuman sentiment was all but unilateral--most had believed that just having the powers made one a magnet for trouble. It would seem this belief would prove far too true for Talynn.

Concealing her direct mutant powers were easy enough. What made them more difficult was that during the middle of her senior year, a month before the holiday break, Talynn's hair, which had been robust shade of auburn, swiftly changed to a dark, greyish color. It was within mere hours at school, before Talynn herself had even realized the change, brought on perhaps by her disuse of her energy powers storing up inside her, or even her limited use, and simply delayed in terms of her change. To this day she does not know, but whatever the reason, it marked her clearly as someone different. After one incident in which she lost control of her power and became completely invisible to a crowd of students and her friends, it confirmed the suspicions many already had. It did not take long before everyone in school found out, though for a time, all it initially resulted was in her being ostracized from even her closest friends who, as much a surprise to her, were using their former friendships to boost their own popularity by saying they 'had known all along'. This lead Talynn to become extremely withdrawn as a result, and her parents planning on moving away from their town into a different community that was far more tolerable.

Unfortunately, this would never come to pass.

The day before the holiday break and departure from the school was supposed to happen, Talynn became a victim of a horrific assault brought upon by the particularly more hateful group of male students who believed Talynn to have used her powers to distort their perceptions of her--which in truth, she had not, but ever since the incident in which her powers forcibly made them believe she was invisible, they had begun to plan to take out their hate and frustrations on Talynn directly. Which lead to them following her home one night, one night they knew her parents were working late, this group of disgruntled young men made known all their hatred and dislike of metahumans, mutants especially. Talynn would never speak of the exact things that happened to her, but it was easy to see--a complete and utter beating, numerous bones broken in an unspeakable manner, and even the complete shaving of her 'unnatural' hair as they had seen it, Talynn was all but left for dead. No matter of screaming or begging stopped this assault, and even as she was left to be found by others, she vowed to herself she would never beg, never scream with her own voice again. It is perhaps a trickling in of her mutant powers kept her alive long enough to be discovered by medical crews, the true cause has never been confirmed as to why she was able to survive, let alone recover.

Over the holiday break, the incident would bragged upon briefly by the perpetrators in closed quarters. Even in the news, the assault went barely noticed, and over the holiday break, over the last 10 days, the break would forever be known as the 'Black Mercy Killings'. Talynn had recuperated to the point she was able to move, but hadn't forgotten who had broken her body so thoroughly. Ten young men in ten days were found brutally maimed, their eyes burnt out by the energy in Talynn's hands. Upon each of them was scrawled in their own blood: "NO MERCY". When it was found out who had killed the men and why, Talynn all but readily admitted such things--after all, she had begged and cried for mercy, for anything to stop what they were doing to her--only for such cries to cause even more pain to her. She refused then on to be called Talynn, only 'Black Mercy', and went into hiding for several months, using her abilities to be hired out for small-time jobs by local criminals.. that is, of course, until...

(to be continued.. because writing at work = bad XD)


[i]I don't believe there is honor in letting yourself be killed, if you can run, then run damnit.[/i]
:D

-Hobo_Healer

Guardian
Aleksander - 50 Energy/Electric/Elec Blaster
Talynn Black - 50 Energy/Energy/Soul Stalker

Virtue
Talynn Black - 24 Warshade