CRAPLICATION
PLAYER
NAME: Leah!
AGE: 19!
JOURNAL: hotforbabyleg!
IM: pudenda express
E-MAIL: gorillaforsandracing AT gmail
RETURNING: I play easytochop, pinecloned, yoursoultokeep, and frobocop.
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Sooraya Qadir/Dust
FANDOM: Marvel 616!
CHRONOLOGY: She'll be, god willing, ported in from the very end of Children of X-Men, aka the calm after two shitstorms! So, uh, basically when she's lying on the floor all :D-faced with Laura and Cessily. That means that she's gone through Quest for Magik, but is taken before Messiah Complex and Young X-Men. Which also means that she will not have to deal with the AWW SHIT AMARA GURL WHY YOU GOTTA MELT ME LIKE THAT storyline.
BACKGROUND:
Okay, so I think you guys pretty safely know what the Marvel 616 universe is like. PROBABLY MUCH MORE SO THAN ME, IN ALL HONESTY, but let's just go with this. The X-Men are mutants. At the time when Sooraya gets introduced, they're starting to turn the Xavier Institute into something more like a legit academy/boarding school than a small institution for a limited group of students! They are also, of course, using the Cerebra system to locate and help newly-manifesting mutants, and when Cerebra tells them that, aw shit, there's a new mutant in Afghanistan, Wolverine, Jean Grey, and Professor X go all upons to find said mutant. Sooraya Qadir, daughter of Mirah Qadir, a woman who the Taliban had a hate-on for, is that mutant; under still-unknown circumstances, she had been abducted by slave traders and was... well, given the apparent track record for mutant slavery, pretty much screwed. When Wolverine showed up to save her ass, however, she had already revealed herself and her powers by flaying the flesh from her captors' bones--because that is what happens when bitches try to remove Sooraya's veil--and passed out. Also, Fantomex held her. In his arms. It was creepy. Wolverine was all "kay that's chill", and he took her to the X-Corps station in India. Jean Grey found her there, and together they went to Xavier's, where she got placed in the special class despite knowing like zero English, and soon after was publically mocked for her beliefs in class and controlled by Magneto (pretending to be Xorn) to help him incapacitate Professor X. Sucks to be her, for sure. Then Magneto blows the fuck out of Xavier's, and when it is rebuilt for the next semester the students are separated into training squads! Sooraya is assigned to Emma Frost's squad, the Hellions, along with Julian Keller (Hellion), Cessily Kincaid (Mercury), Jay Guthrie (Icarus), Santo Vaccaro (Rockslide), and Brian Cruz (Tag), and given the codename Dust.
The Hellions proceed to get into the most ridiculous goddamn schoolyard rivalry ever with the New Mutants, Dani Moonstar's training squad, which initially consists of Sofia Mantega (Wind Dancer), Kevin Ford (Wither), Laurie Collins (Wallflower), Josh Foley (Elixir), David Alleyne (Prodigy), and Noriko Ashida (Surge.) Noriko is Sooraya's roommate, and they have the most strained and awkward relationship ever. Although Sooraya has no grudge against the New Mutants, she goes along with Julian's leadership, which annoys Noriko even more. When Kevin's past misfire of his powers (by manifesting, he accidentally killed his own father) get him into trouble with the law, the Hellions and Sofia, minus Jay, end up trying to break him out before he can face trial; the rest of the New Mutants, including Jay, try to stop them. In the aftermath of the fight, Kevin decides to transfer to the Hellions, and Jay joins the New Mutants instead. For the rest of the school year, it's pretty much the same stupid rivalry, though romantic entanglements between the two teams complicate things. Sooraya, for her part, stays friends with Jay.
At the end of the year ceremony, the Hellions are awarded the trophy for... well, doing the best out of all the squads. During the summer vacation, they go to stay at Julian's house in California, where his parents, who are total dicks, leave; Julian finds a scroll. Although Sooraya initially refuses to try the offer, calling it a deal with the devil, she relents, and her wish is briefly fulfilled--the Kingmaker finds her mother, Mirah, for her. When it comes to light that the Kingmaker will only continue fulfilling their wishes if they commit crimes for him, all the Hellions immediately force him to free them from his deal, and together they ~*~save the day~*~, but because of that, all the rewards for their efforts disappear--including Mirah Qadir, who is transferred from her internment camp, and effectively disappears again. Still, they've done the right thing, and next year will surely hold many shenanigns!!!
And then we get M-Day.
Out of the Hellions, only Brian is depowered, which means that only one of their teammates is horribly killed when a rocket hits the bus which is meant to drive the depowered students back home. But all of them, including Sooraya, get to watch that bus explode into flames, and desperately try and fail to save the 42 kids on the bus. Kevin runs away after mistakenly withering Laurie's arm, and X-23, aka Laura, aka SOB JUNE COME BACK, becomes Sooraya's new roommate after Noriko requests a single (so she and David can get it on, let's be honest.) Sooraya is selected as part of Emma Frost's handpicked team of New X-Men, but guess what? The shitstorm is not even close to over. Reverend William Stryker, anti-mutant activist and general asshole, has gained a reputation for prophecy and a following because of it; in truth, however, he is seeing the future through Nimrod, the super-advanced Sentinel from the future, and he can see what an assault on the Institute will lead to. There are only a few X-Men who can prevent him from killing all the motherfuckers in the building; on the list are Laurie and Sooraya. Laurie is murdered, sniped by one of his followers, but his attempts to kill Sooraya are a little more complicated.
Jay Guthrie, about a week before this, was convinced by Stryker that if he cut his wings off, his friends would be saved, which is... yeah, Jay's an emotional little fucker. Anyway, he gets dumped off on Xavier's doorstep, and his healing powers, which stem from his wings, are gone. A week later, Jay tells Sooraya that he's made a terrible mistake and has to fix it, giving her a scrap of paper with Stryker's headquarters' address--while Sooraya wants to go after him to the church, Laura warns her not to, because he "smells of death." Once Laura realizes that Sooraya's not going to listen to her, she knocks her out, puts on her clothes, and goes to the church herself, where she's summarily shot down. She was, of course, right about it being a trap; thankfully, getting shot isn't really an object to Laura, although it is to Jay, who gets... well, shot. And dies. Sooraya, meanwhile, wakes up on her bathroom floor in underwear to the entire Institute being attacked by Stryker's Purifiers, and she fulfills her role, killing a shitload of Purifiers until Stryker himself is killed by Josh, Laurie's ex-boyfriend.
After this massive cast-purging, we have more shenanigans! Sooraya helps the other New X-Men when Nimrod gets fully activated and goes cuckoo bananas on Forge, his maker; later, she and the rest of the students are yanked into Hell by a crazy Belasco, determined to find Illyana Rasputin (and unaware that the only Illyana Rasputin they were ever with was one they don't even remember--a version from House of M, where Sooraya and Jubilee were bffl mallrats, so yeah.) Sooraya and Cessily do their best to hold Belasco off--Sooraya in particular, although initially terrified, decides that if she must die, she will die making Allah proud--until crazy evil Illyana McTailhooves and the other X-Men show up to finish the job. I'm taking her from shortly after that, before the events of Messiah Complex and Young X-Men, or even Secret Invasion, so I'll just... stop right now, because this history section is fucking enormous and she's only been in continuity for seven years. Basically, she gets melted, shattered, made into sand again, killed, resurrected, and then apparently... might be evil 20 or so years from the present? It's a massive headache that I just want to avoid at all costs, man.
PERSONALITY:
Let's tackle the faith thing first, because it gets brought up, pretty constantly. Sooraya is an observant Sunni Muslim and she wears what she sometimes calls a burqa and everyone else calls a burqa, even though it's not... a burqa... it's an abaya and a niqab. ANYWAY THE POINT IS THAT SHE IS VERY DEVOTED AND OBSERVES HIJAB ENTIRELY OF HER OWN FREE WILL. Sooraya's faith is an incredibly important part of her character, and the inner strength she finds through that faith is often at odds with her initially quiet demeanor and desire not to rock the boat, so to speak. When she first starts attending classes at Xavier's, she's almost entirely silent; when people like Noriko call her beliefs sexist and oppressive to women, she just stays quiet and stares at her. We find out later that Sooraya can be quite assertive, and has no problem at all with telling Taliban members to get the fuck out of her town before she shears the flesh from their bones, but when it comes to culture shock in the West--at least initially--she's at a loss for words. She's quiet and obedient, and rarely stands up for herself overtly; she doesn't correct anyone about the burqa thing, for example, although I think that's more Marvel's own profound failure in the Academy X run, because Jesus Christ, her own mother calls it a burqa when they are in goddamn Afghanistan. Despite her willingness to go along with plans that she considers flawed and dangerous, such as Julian's plan to rescue... Kevin... oh god he's such an idiot, if something clashes with Sooraya's ideals, she will decline it without fail. Going to the dance with Jay, for example, is something that makes her uncomfortable, so she turns him down. Sooraya's a modest person, even without the spectre of the Taliban hanging over her, and although she becomes more comfortable among her teammates and friends
Slowly, however, Sooraya begins to get over her desire to please and assert herself--albeit still politely--when she dislikes a situation. We know that she's capable of this from the beginning, from when she tells Noriko that her willingness to... you know... run around naked makes her as incomprehensible to Sooraya as she is to Noriko, but it's a gradual process that gets more noticeable over time. In her comfort zone, she's much more assertive and overtly happy; occasionally, she's even sarcastic. Since I'm not taking her from the Young X-Men run, her telling off Santo doesn't really count, but she does decide to hold back when most of her classmates are like SHIT YES LET'S GO ATTACK THE PURIFIERS. By the same token, however, Sooraya's faith is occasionally shaken by her own actions. At the point where I'm taking her from, she's killed people, and she's done it a lot; Belasco the demon addresses it directly, telling her that she's afraid she no longer deserves Allah's love. Even though Sooraya believes, without wavering in the face of the pretty much endless shitstorm following M-Day, in a loving and omnipotent God with a larger plan, she starts questioning her own worthiness. Despite having an inherently destructive power, she doesn't like to kill; I mean, seriously, half the time she doesn't even want to fight with her roommate. She's seen death since a very young age, she's been surrounded with it since Decimation, and she doesn't want to contribute to it in any fashion, but at the same time she knows she has to, if she wants to stop the people causing that bloodshed or preserve anything and anyone she cares about. It's a pretty vicious cycle, which obviously would lead her to calling her own beliefs into question, but to her credit she stays pretty strong, and by the end of Quest for Magik appears to have new affirmation in her faith.
Number one on Sooraya's list of priorities, however, no matter how much she likes her situation and her friends, is always finding her mother. Thanks to the Kingmaker, she does locate her for a very brief period of time, but when she and the rest of the Hellions refuse to cooperate with his demands, she's moved to another internment camp. Sooraya's unnamed and unknown (which of course would be a big fucking deal in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and probably got her mocked, if not outright shunned--she herself has never met the man and knows nothing about him) father, whoever he is, isn't a big factor in her life, but her mother absolutely is, and she urgently wants to locate her again and help her emigrate to America. Despite/because of her faith, she also is strongly opposed to the Taliban, and later on, when the X-Men disband, she actually moves around from town to town helping people rout them from the area. By scouring their hands off. It's pretty badass. Still, there's always a sort of melancholy sense to her calm quietude, which I think is understandable. She's a refugee, an exile from her own home, and she doesn't know where any of her family is. When she makes friends, they die or get kidnapped and tortured by the Facility. When she gets comfortable in her own skin, the fucking X-Mansion explodes all over the place and half the student body gets depowered. When it seems like they're going to finally get some peace and quiet, half the school is dragged into hell and murdered over and over. Sooraya, like the rest of her classmates, has been through hell--I mean, literally, but also figuratively--and on top of that she's a devoutly observant Muslim and a mutant in a country full of dicks. She has every reason to be less than a normal, happy girl; but Sooraya isn't a normal girl, which is why she can still go on doing what she does. She's a survivor, no matter what the circumstances, and her resilience and faith--even when the latter part gets shaken by her own concerns
CLASS: hero!
SUPERHERO NAME: Dust!
ALTER EGO: Sooraya Qadir... student... of stuff? I do not know. Chances are she'll end up chilling in the X-Mansion immediately after arriving anyway!
POWER: Sooraya can turn her entire body into living sand and move it as she deems fit. Basically, she can go bigass motherfucking sandstorm on cue! She can use this to flay people's flesh from their bodies, fly all cloud-like, or tear through materials up to and including solid steel. She's also slightly more resistant to magic and virtually impossible to detect telepathically when she's in her dustcloud form.
COMMUNITY POST SAMPLE: [hello, A.I. voice :| while robot-chan concludes her speech, it's undercut by fumbling, button-pressing noises! lots of them! it sounds like someone is fiddling with the communicator, none too competently, but that fades into background noise as an accented female voice starts speaking. it's a teenage girl, and she sounds scared as hell, but her voice is clear and steady.]
Oh, no.
Cessily? Laura? Are you... is there anyone here who can hear me? It is perhaps too much to ask for, but... if there are any X-Men listening to this message, may they answer me? This cannot be happening again. This is Dust. I am in a laboratory. I do not... the location--what is this place?
THIRD PERSON: People were watching her as she passed. That was normal. She was in New York (although they didn't appear to call it that--why was that? was it an alternate dimension? oh, she really hoped it was not an alternate dimension) alone, a mutant, in Islamic hijab. Staring was normal; insults were also normal. She had begun to expect both of them a long time ago, but she had not learned to expect it in this setting. She did not know where she was (it appeared to be New York, of course--she had been there before, with Ms. Grey--but beyond that basic knowledge Sooraya was utterly lost), she did not know where her teammates were, she did not know if her teammates so much as existed here, and large groups of people put her on edge, as did cities--altogether, this was not amounting to a pleasant day.
She kept the communicator securely in her hand, tapping the buttons idly with her index finger; she assumed that the sleeves of her abaya concealed it from the gaze of passersby, but even if they did see it, what would they know? Under less close examination, it looked similar to any other communication device. It was silly of her to worry. She must endeavor to be calm. She was not alone; He was with her always, and
It was strange, wasn't it? Just how unsettled she was. A part of her told herself that it was natural, normal, given the circumstances, but she was not a normal girl, had never been a normal girl. She was an X-Man, and that alone made this standard for her. Two days ago, Sooraya had been in Hell, fighting Shaitan himself. She had watched the devil torture and murder her friends, only to bring them back later; why was she so on edge now? She didn't like crowds of people. She had never been comfortable with large groups; Sooraya knew too well what mobs were capable of, but it could not be only that. It could not only be the sense of familiarity the feeling had given her, of being yanked from a moment of relative peace to something unimaginable. The feeling was inexplicable, but present nonetheless; this place was not right, and she should not be here. Allah knew all things, and what would happen would happen, but nevertheless there was the fear of the moment, and her mouth was dry and her eyes moved fast in her head, scanning the street for both restaurants and potential sources of conflict. Sooraya fidgeted some more with the communicator, and, underneath the niqab, bit her lip, but none of the anxiety she felt made its way into her stride down the street. Until she found a spot to attempt contact, after all, there was nothing to do but keep moving forward.
NAME: Leah!
AGE: 19!
JOURNAL: hotforbabyleg!
IM: pudenda express
E-MAIL: gorillaforsandracing AT gmail
RETURNING: I play easytochop, pinecloned, yoursoultokeep, and frobocop.
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Sooraya Qadir/Dust
FANDOM: Marvel 616!
CHRONOLOGY: She'll be, god willing, ported in from the very end of Children of X-Men, aka the calm after two shitstorms! So, uh, basically when she's lying on the floor all :D-faced with Laura and Cessily. That means that she's gone through Quest for Magik, but is taken before Messiah Complex and Young X-Men. Which also means that she will not have to deal with the AWW SHIT AMARA GURL WHY YOU GOTTA MELT ME LIKE THAT storyline.
BACKGROUND:
Okay, so I think you guys pretty safely know what the Marvel 616 universe is like. PROBABLY MUCH MORE SO THAN ME, IN ALL HONESTY, but let's just go with this. The X-Men are mutants. At the time when Sooraya gets introduced, they're starting to turn the Xavier Institute into something more like a legit academy/boarding school than a small institution for a limited group of students! They are also, of course, using the Cerebra system to locate and help newly-manifesting mutants, and when Cerebra tells them that, aw shit, there's a new mutant in Afghanistan, Wolverine, Jean Grey, and Professor X go all upons to find said mutant. Sooraya Qadir, daughter of Mirah Qadir, a woman who the Taliban had a hate-on for, is that mutant; under still-unknown circumstances, she had been abducted by slave traders and was... well, given the apparent track record for mutant slavery, pretty much screwed. When Wolverine showed up to save her ass, however, she had already revealed herself and her powers by flaying the flesh from her captors' bones--because that is what happens when bitches try to remove Sooraya's veil--and passed out. Also, Fantomex held her. In his arms. It was creepy. Wolverine was all "kay that's chill", and he took her to the X-Corps station in India. Jean Grey found her there, and together they went to Xavier's, where she got placed in the special class despite knowing like zero English, and soon after was publically mocked for her beliefs in class and controlled by Magneto (pretending to be Xorn) to help him incapacitate Professor X. Sucks to be her, for sure. Then Magneto blows the fuck out of Xavier's, and when it is rebuilt for the next semester the students are separated into training squads! Sooraya is assigned to Emma Frost's squad, the Hellions, along with Julian Keller (Hellion), Cessily Kincaid (Mercury), Jay Guthrie (Icarus), Santo Vaccaro (Rockslide), and Brian Cruz (Tag), and given the codename Dust.
The Hellions proceed to get into the most ridiculous goddamn schoolyard rivalry ever with the New Mutants, Dani Moonstar's training squad, which initially consists of Sofia Mantega (Wind Dancer), Kevin Ford (Wither), Laurie Collins (Wallflower), Josh Foley (Elixir), David Alleyne (Prodigy), and Noriko Ashida (Surge.) Noriko is Sooraya's roommate, and they have the most strained and awkward relationship ever. Although Sooraya has no grudge against the New Mutants, she goes along with Julian's leadership, which annoys Noriko even more. When Kevin's past misfire of his powers (by manifesting, he accidentally killed his own father) get him into trouble with the law, the Hellions and Sofia, minus Jay, end up trying to break him out before he can face trial; the rest of the New Mutants, including Jay, try to stop them. In the aftermath of the fight, Kevin decides to transfer to the Hellions, and Jay joins the New Mutants instead. For the rest of the school year, it's pretty much the same stupid rivalry, though romantic entanglements between the two teams complicate things. Sooraya, for her part, stays friends with Jay.
At the end of the year ceremony, the Hellions are awarded the trophy for... well, doing the best out of all the squads. During the summer vacation, they go to stay at Julian's house in California, where his parents, who are total dicks, leave; Julian finds a scroll. Although Sooraya initially refuses to try the offer, calling it a deal with the devil, she relents, and her wish is briefly fulfilled--the Kingmaker finds her mother, Mirah, for her. When it comes to light that the Kingmaker will only continue fulfilling their wishes if they commit crimes for him, all the Hellions immediately force him to free them from his deal, and together they ~*~save the day~*~, but because of that, all the rewards for their efforts disappear--including Mirah Qadir, who is transferred from her internment camp, and effectively disappears again. Still, they've done the right thing, and next year will surely hold many shenanigns!!!
And then we get M-Day.
Out of the Hellions, only Brian is depowered, which means that only one of their teammates is horribly killed when a rocket hits the bus which is meant to drive the depowered students back home. But all of them, including Sooraya, get to watch that bus explode into flames, and desperately try and fail to save the 42 kids on the bus. Kevin runs away after mistakenly withering Laurie's arm, and X-23, aka Laura, aka SOB JUNE COME BACK, becomes Sooraya's new roommate after Noriko requests a single (so she and David can get it on, let's be honest.) Sooraya is selected as part of Emma Frost's handpicked team of New X-Men, but guess what? The shitstorm is not even close to over. Reverend William Stryker, anti-mutant activist and general asshole, has gained a reputation for prophecy and a following because of it; in truth, however, he is seeing the future through Nimrod, the super-advanced Sentinel from the future, and he can see what an assault on the Institute will lead to. There are only a few X-Men who can prevent him from killing all the motherfuckers in the building; on the list are Laurie and Sooraya. Laurie is murdered, sniped by one of his followers, but his attempts to kill Sooraya are a little more complicated.
Jay Guthrie, about a week before this, was convinced by Stryker that if he cut his wings off, his friends would be saved, which is... yeah, Jay's an emotional little fucker. Anyway, he gets dumped off on Xavier's doorstep, and his healing powers, which stem from his wings, are gone. A week later, Jay tells Sooraya that he's made a terrible mistake and has to fix it, giving her a scrap of paper with Stryker's headquarters' address--while Sooraya wants to go after him to the church, Laura warns her not to, because he "smells of death." Once Laura realizes that Sooraya's not going to listen to her, she knocks her out, puts on her clothes, and goes to the church herself, where she's summarily shot down. She was, of course, right about it being a trap; thankfully, getting shot isn't really an object to Laura, although it is to Jay, who gets... well, shot. And dies. Sooraya, meanwhile, wakes up on her bathroom floor in underwear to the entire Institute being attacked by Stryker's Purifiers, and she fulfills her role, killing a shitload of Purifiers until Stryker himself is killed by Josh, Laurie's ex-boyfriend.
After this massive cast-purging, we have more shenanigans! Sooraya helps the other New X-Men when Nimrod gets fully activated and goes cuckoo bananas on Forge, his maker; later, she and the rest of the students are yanked into Hell by a crazy Belasco, determined to find Illyana Rasputin (and unaware that the only Illyana Rasputin they were ever with was one they don't even remember--a version from House of M, where Sooraya and Jubilee were bffl mallrats, so yeah.) Sooraya and Cessily do their best to hold Belasco off--Sooraya in particular, although initially terrified, decides that if she must die, she will die making Allah proud--until crazy evil Illyana McTailhooves and the other X-Men show up to finish the job. I'm taking her from shortly after that, before the events of Messiah Complex and Young X-Men, or even Secret Invasion, so I'll just... stop right now, because this history section is fucking enormous and she's only been in continuity for seven years. Basically, she gets melted, shattered, made into sand again, killed, resurrected, and then apparently... might be evil 20 or so years from the present? It's a massive headache that I just want to avoid at all costs, man.
PERSONALITY:
Let's tackle the faith thing first, because it gets brought up, pretty constantly. Sooraya is an observant Sunni Muslim and she wears what she sometimes calls a burqa and everyone else calls a burqa, even though it's not... a burqa... it's an abaya and a niqab. ANYWAY THE POINT IS THAT SHE IS VERY DEVOTED AND OBSERVES HIJAB ENTIRELY OF HER OWN FREE WILL. Sooraya's faith is an incredibly important part of her character, and the inner strength she finds through that faith is often at odds with her initially quiet demeanor and desire not to rock the boat, so to speak. When she first starts attending classes at Xavier's, she's almost entirely silent; when people like Noriko call her beliefs sexist and oppressive to women, she just stays quiet and stares at her. We find out later that Sooraya can be quite assertive, and has no problem at all with telling Taliban members to get the fuck out of her town before she shears the flesh from their bones, but when it comes to culture shock in the West--at least initially--she's at a loss for words. She's quiet and obedient, and rarely stands up for herself overtly; she doesn't correct anyone about the burqa thing, for example, although I think that's more Marvel's own profound failure in the Academy X run, because Jesus Christ, her own mother calls it a burqa when they are in goddamn Afghanistan. Despite her willingness to go along with plans that she considers flawed and dangerous, such as Julian's plan to rescue... Kevin... oh god he's such an idiot, if something clashes with Sooraya's ideals, she will decline it without fail. Going to the dance with Jay, for example, is something that makes her uncomfortable, so she turns him down. Sooraya's a modest person, even without the spectre of the Taliban hanging over her, and although she becomes more comfortable among her teammates and friends
Slowly, however, Sooraya begins to get over her desire to please and assert herself--albeit still politely--when she dislikes a situation. We know that she's capable of this from the beginning, from when she tells Noriko that her willingness to... you know... run around naked makes her as incomprehensible to Sooraya as she is to Noriko, but it's a gradual process that gets more noticeable over time. In her comfort zone, she's much more assertive and overtly happy; occasionally, she's even sarcastic. Since I'm not taking her from the Young X-Men run, her telling off Santo doesn't really count, but she does decide to hold back when most of her classmates are like SHIT YES LET'S GO ATTACK THE PURIFIERS. By the same token, however, Sooraya's faith is occasionally shaken by her own actions. At the point where I'm taking her from, she's killed people, and she's done it a lot; Belasco the demon addresses it directly, telling her that she's afraid she no longer deserves Allah's love. Even though Sooraya believes, without wavering in the face of the pretty much endless shitstorm following M-Day, in a loving and omnipotent God with a larger plan, she starts questioning her own worthiness. Despite having an inherently destructive power, she doesn't like to kill; I mean, seriously, half the time she doesn't even want to fight with her roommate. She's seen death since a very young age, she's been surrounded with it since Decimation, and she doesn't want to contribute to it in any fashion, but at the same time she knows she has to, if she wants to stop the people causing that bloodshed or preserve anything and anyone she cares about. It's a pretty vicious cycle, which obviously would lead her to calling her own beliefs into question, but to her credit she stays pretty strong, and by the end of Quest for Magik appears to have new affirmation in her faith.
Number one on Sooraya's list of priorities, however, no matter how much she likes her situation and her friends, is always finding her mother. Thanks to the Kingmaker, she does locate her for a very brief period of time, but when she and the rest of the Hellions refuse to cooperate with his demands, she's moved to another internment camp. Sooraya's unnamed and unknown (which of course would be a big fucking deal in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and probably got her mocked, if not outright shunned--she herself has never met the man and knows nothing about him) father, whoever he is, isn't a big factor in her life, but her mother absolutely is, and she urgently wants to locate her again and help her emigrate to America. Despite/because of her faith, she also is strongly opposed to the Taliban, and later on, when the X-Men disband, she actually moves around from town to town helping people rout them from the area. By scouring their hands off. It's pretty badass. Still, there's always a sort of melancholy sense to her calm quietude, which I think is understandable. She's a refugee, an exile from her own home, and she doesn't know where any of her family is. When she makes friends, they die or get kidnapped and tortured by the Facility. When she gets comfortable in her own skin, the fucking X-Mansion explodes all over the place and half the student body gets depowered. When it seems like they're going to finally get some peace and quiet, half the school is dragged into hell and murdered over and over. Sooraya, like the rest of her classmates, has been through hell--I mean, literally, but also figuratively--and on top of that she's a devoutly observant Muslim and a mutant in a country full of dicks. She has every reason to be less than a normal, happy girl; but Sooraya isn't a normal girl, which is why she can still go on doing what she does. She's a survivor, no matter what the circumstances, and her resilience and faith--even when the latter part gets shaken by her own concerns
CLASS: hero!
SUPERHERO NAME: Dust!
ALTER EGO: Sooraya Qadir... student... of stuff? I do not know. Chances are she'll end up chilling in the X-Mansion immediately after arriving anyway!
POWER: Sooraya can turn her entire body into living sand and move it as she deems fit. Basically, she can go bigass motherfucking sandstorm on cue! She can use this to flay people's flesh from their bodies, fly all cloud-like, or tear through materials up to and including solid steel. She's also slightly more resistant to magic and virtually impossible to detect telepathically when she's in her dustcloud form.
COMMUNITY POST SAMPLE: [hello, A.I. voice :| while robot-chan concludes her speech, it's undercut by fumbling, button-pressing noises! lots of them! it sounds like someone is fiddling with the communicator, none too competently, but that fades into background noise as an accented female voice starts speaking. it's a teenage girl, and she sounds scared as hell, but her voice is clear and steady.]
Oh, no.
Cessily? Laura? Are you... is there anyone here who can hear me? It is perhaps too much to ask for, but... if there are any X-Men listening to this message, may they answer me? This cannot be happening again. This is Dust. I am in a laboratory. I do not... the location--what is this place?
THIRD PERSON: People were watching her as she passed. That was normal. She was in New York (although they didn't appear to call it that--why was that? was it an alternate dimension? oh, she really hoped it was not an alternate dimension) alone, a mutant, in Islamic hijab. Staring was normal; insults were also normal. She had begun to expect both of them a long time ago, but she had not learned to expect it in this setting. She did not know where she was (it appeared to be New York, of course--she had been there before, with Ms. Grey--but beyond that basic knowledge Sooraya was utterly lost), she did not know where her teammates were, she did not know if her teammates so much as existed here, and large groups of people put her on edge, as did cities--altogether, this was not amounting to a pleasant day.
She kept the communicator securely in her hand, tapping the buttons idly with her index finger; she assumed that the sleeves of her abaya concealed it from the gaze of passersby, but even if they did see it, what would they know? Under less close examination, it looked similar to any other communication device. It was silly of her to worry. She must endeavor to be calm. She was not alone; He was with her always, and
It was strange, wasn't it? Just how unsettled she was. A part of her told herself that it was natural, normal, given the circumstances, but she was not a normal girl, had never been a normal girl. She was an X-Man, and that alone made this standard for her. Two days ago, Sooraya had been in Hell, fighting Shaitan himself. She had watched the devil torture and murder her friends, only to bring them back later; why was she so on edge now? She didn't like crowds of people. She had never been comfortable with large groups; Sooraya knew too well what mobs were capable of, but it could not be only that. It could not only be the sense of familiarity the feeling had given her, of being yanked from a moment of relative peace to something unimaginable. The feeling was inexplicable, but present nonetheless; this place was not right, and she should not be here. Allah knew all things, and what would happen would happen, but nevertheless there was the fear of the moment, and her mouth was dry and her eyes moved fast in her head, scanning the street for both restaurants and potential sources of conflict. Sooraya fidgeted some more with the communicator, and, underneath the niqab, bit her lip, but none of the anxiety she felt made its way into her stride down the street. Until she found a spot to attempt contact, after all, there was nothing to do but keep moving forward.