Piper Crumin
May 17, 2010 0:53:57 GMT -5
Post by Piper Crumin on May 17, 2010 0:53:57 GMT -5
The easy S T U F F . . .Name: Piper Romelia Crumin
Age: Fourteen
Member Group: Student
Power(s): Superhuman Dexterity-
Piper has perfect balance and equilibrium, as well as incredible speed and agility. She can simply tell her body to do something and it will do it, within reason. She can jump unbelievably high and is very accurate with how far or how fast she wants to go. With this advancement in her physicality, her body tends to have a weakened immune system, so if Piper catches something, it will be much worse for her than for a normal person. One time, being in the rain for a couple minutes gave her a three-week-long case of pneumonia. Because of this she can't eat anything sweet or anything that will badly affect her health.
Play By: Melanie BeadlesLet it F L O W . . .Her name was Piper Romelia Gellespey. Every day she hated her name a little more. She hated it when people called her Pipes, because she wasn't sure if they were being friendly, or sarcastic or making some sexual comment. She hated that people called her Pied Piper sometimes, and she hated it when people asked her if she had picked a pair of pickled peppers recently. She wasn't even sure if peppers could be pickled. She'd never seen any. Sometimes, she felt that she was born to hate, that she could never really love something. She knew for a fact that if she had been in her favorite movie, she would be a jedi with a red lightsaber.
She hated the way she looked; hated her brown hair and how long it was and how it always seemed to be in the way. She hated that her father wouldn't let her cut it. She hated the fact that she looked so much like her mother that sometimes her father would slip up and call her “Irene” every now and again. She hated her teeth, which, though straight, her canines were longer than the rest of her teeth, making her look like a vampire. She hated vampires. She hated her slightly-asymmetrical nose, and the bags under her eyes. She hated that she was so much shorter than all the other kids in her class. She hated that her eyes were too big for her face, and that her bushy eyebrows didn't help at all. Mostly, she hated that she was so stupidly plain and average-looking.
The girl hated her mother for dying the day Piper was born. Only alive long enough to give her the name she despised so much. She hated that her father would forget her birthday because he was mourning over a woman that Piper had never met. She hated the fact that she couldn't step out of her apartment in San Fran without stepping into some gang's “turf”.
She hated the girls at school who would think that life is rainbows and puppies and unicorns. She hated rainbows and puppies and unicorns, too. She hated crying in front of people. She hated crying in general, and she did everything in her power not to cry.
Piper hated so many things that she thought she would never be happy. She struggled with life, diving into depression and into confusion. There was nothing in the world that seemed to give her any hope of happiness. She only felt like she could hate. Ironic that the happiest day of her life was the day that her father committed manslaughter.
He didn't mean to, mind you. That's why they call it manslaughter. He had gotten drunk again and decided that calling a cab was beyond him. One thing led to another and he was convicted. Jakob Gellespey got seven years in prison. It was at this time that Piper found out she had no family but what was left of the man she called her father. But, according to her mother's will, Piper was to live with her godfather, Darren Crumin. Crumin was someone that Piper had never met, all she knew was that he and her mother had been friends when she had been alive. She knew he lived alone, and that she would be intruding into his home. At least, that's what she felt she knew.
~
Crumin sent for her just hours after Jakob was convicted. As if taking on a girl raised as street-scum was just like caring for someone's pet fish while they were on vacation. She arrived at his home in a few hours, and it was a glorious place. It was almost an Estate, a large house with wide open spaces for a yard and gardens. It resided in a small community where there were no gangs. There was no pollution; it was just clean and bright and beautiful all the time. She had only known the stench of the city and she felt dirty coming from somewhere to filthy to come to this place that smelled of the ocean and the grass and it was wonderful.
Meeting Crumin went something like-
“It's Piper, isn't it?”
Piper stared at Darren Crumin when he greeted her at the door. He had big blue eyes and a stern-looking visage. His nose was long and slightly crooked, and his mouth was too wide for his face. His hair had gone all white, and hung behind his back in a low ponytail. He was very tall, making the short girl feel even smaller.
“Yes, sir.” She paused, still eying him carefully, “You were my mom's best friend, yeah?”
“Yes. I was. Come in, any room in this house is open to you, as it is your new home.” He led her through the bright, clean house. There were so many windows, so clear they didn't even seem to have glass in them.
Piper stared directly at him, her dark blue eyes piercing his. “Why are you being so nice to me? You don't even know me.”
He didn't answer, instead he laughed, and Piper noticed that his canine teeth were long and sharp, like hers.
~
It was then that Piper started to discover things about herself that she didn't know before.
First off, she didn't hate everything. She didn't hate Crumin.
“Piper, wake up!” Crumin shook the nine-year-old awake at around four on a Saturday morning.
“What do you want?”
“Just come here!”
She descended down the stairs and into the kitchen. Crumin was flipping pancakes. “Seriously? You woke me up for pancakes?” She sat at the kitchen table, resting her face against her hand.
Crowse came and sat next to her, pushing a platter of pancakes with chocolate syrup and strawberries and whipped cream on them. “You bet I did. There's nothing as wonderful as having pancakes at four in the morning.”
She wouldn't admit it then, but Crumin was right.
As time passed, Piper got suspicious of Crumin. She didn't think he was secretly evil or anything, but there was something very strange about how he treated her and how he looked and how he was the person she went to when her father was in jail.
“I'm changing my name.” She announced on her eleventh birthday.
“What? Why?” Crumin looked at her oddly, “I thought you were finally starting to like 'Piper'.”
Piper shook her head. “Not the 'Piper' part. The 'Gellespey' part.”
The odd look on Crumin's face didn't fade. “Why?”
Piper sighed, “Because why should I carry the name of a man who isn't my father?”
Crumin didn't even blink, “What are you talking about?”
The girl growled, “Dammit-”
“None of that language in my house, Piper.”
Piper sighed, “Fine. I wish I didn't have to spell this out for you. I know that you're my dad. Like, my real dad.”
“But-”
“Uncle C, I would rather you not try to defend my mom and him. You have my teeth and my eyes and I knew I never looked anything like Gellespey. You're my legal guardian anyway, can't you let me do this, for my birthday?”
It took some convincing, but within a week, there was no more Piper Gellespey, in her place was Piper Crumin. It was also in this week that she discovered that Crumin was in love with Irene, Piper's mom, before she moved away. When Irene came to visit Crumin a few years later, their love picked up where it had left off, despite Piper's mom being married.
Piper no longer hated her mother.
~
Later that year Piper discovered something scary about herself.
It was when she decided she wanted to take a break from being homeschooled by Crumin and try to go to the public school with some people she had befriended at the park.
That was a disaster. Not only did Piper discover that because Crumin was rich, people at school began to think that Piper must always be loaded with cash at all times. This started the daily ritual of people grabbing her and beating her senseless or giving them money. She never had money, and made it a point not to carry it to school because of this.
And one day, it was the end of that.
“Crowse! Come back!” Some of the guys were shouting at her things like that, but there was no way that Piper was going to come back. Lately, during P.E. She noticed she was far faster than anyone in her class when she ran. She just told her body that it needed to go faster, and the faster it went.
But the fact that she was running down a dead-end that cut off into one of the walls of the school was not a good thing. She found herself at the wall with the older, taller, and stronger guys cornering her. One tried punching her, but Piper found herself catching his punch. Not only catching it, but stopping it. She was just as confused as he was, but quickly got over it, thinking it was some miracle. Perhaps fate had taken pity on her and gave her the power to take care of herself for a moment. She wasn't about to let this moment pass by, either. One of her feet came up and smashed into his face, and he fell to the ground, dumbfounded by her sudden strength. She was panting, but the other guys were very mad about their fallen friend and were coming at her. Her body seemed to move on its own, dodging the attacks, and manipulating itself so it wasn't hit. It was madness.
Piper glanced up at the wall, and all she could think was that was the only way she could get away. She breathed, and told her body she had to do this, even if it was completely crazy. She jumped, closing her eyes as she did so.
Hours seemed to pass until her feet were on the ground. They weren't on the ground, though. She had jumped up to the top of the building by herself. She was stunned for the longest time, but took off running home.
~
A few weeks later, Piper's strange powers hadn't gone. The girl she knew a few months ago couldn't even touch her toes, but the girl now could bend over backwards and do crazy stunts and jump impossible heights and was as flexible as a trained contortionist.
Crumin warned her of her power. He called it Superhuman Dexterity, and there was some kind of downfall she would have to deal with later. She didn't listen; she was too busy dodging paintballs and jumping over lakes.
And then the downfall happened. A virus swept through the school, and Piper caught it. To most, they got a runny nose and in the worst cases, had to stay home from school for a day or two. That didn't happen to Piper. She stayed home for two weeks. She didn't get just the sniffles, either. Her temperature went up to 105 degrees, and she had to spend most of her time in an ice bath. She was like that for days and couldn't eat anything without losing it coming right back up. It was around this time that Crumin figured out that her immune system was as weak as the rest of Piper was strong.
Because of her weak system, Crumin completely changed Piper's diet. She no longer ate sweets and all of their food was organic. Her diet was perfect and balanced and was kept out of the rain and wore clothes that kept her body's temperature regulated.
She found herself getting sick very often, making her school life irregular. That wasn't the only thing that made her irregular, though. A lot of people at school had heard of the impossible things that Piper had done, and it made her strange. Piper still had a friend, though. One girl who thought that Piper was interesting.
Piper soon found out that she hadn't gotten over her hate. Because she hated the moment that she realized she was gay. She hated that she felt uncomfortable around girls when she came to this conclusion. She hated her body for feeling what it felt when she saw a pretty girl. All her certainties had almost all gone, but she wouldn't let herself cry when she was thirteen and when that one boy asked her to a dance, and she didn't know what to say. He was the last person to like her at the school. Her first crush had moved away, which was probably for the best.
Piper was completely alone.
~
“Piper, we need to talk.” Crumin came into Piper's room. She was lying in bed, recovering from some pneumonia that she had gotten by getting caught in the rain on the walk home from school a little while ago. It wasn't as bad as it could be, but it was the third time she had pneumonia this year. She could see the worry in Crumin's eyes.
“What do you need, Dad?” She had begun to call him that, because, as far as she was concerned, he deserved it more than Gellespey.
“I was thinking, that this-” He gestured at her, “is a really high price to pay for having the things you can do.”
“We've already tried just stopping altogether, and it still happened. I can't just stop and hope for the best-”
Crumin held up a hand, “Yes, yes. I know, hon. But this school has contacted me, there are kids like you there-”
“-I'm not leaving you. I'm already so alone here, if I leave, then I'll be totally alone. You can't seriously do that to me.” The fifteen-year-old sat up in bed, pushing her hair off of her face.
“They're going to take you anyway, Piper! You're a danger to people!” Crumin wasn't yelling, just talking over her, being forceful. He did that when she didn't listen to him.
Piper was quiet.
Crumin calmed down a bit, “Piper, I don't want you to go, but you really do need to control your powers better. Plus they can probably help with the immune system, and that would be really good for you. If you go there a year and you don't get the help you need, then I'll do everything in my power to get you back, you know that, right?”
Piper looked away. “I don't want to leave. It isn't fair.” She was feeling woozy, so she laid back down. She sighed, turning onto her side, “When am I going?”
Crumin gave a sad smile, “Once your fever is gone.” He patted her leg through the comforters.
Piper buried her face into the pillows on her bed and cried quietly.Behind the M A S K . . .Name: Jenny, or Jennybird. Some people call me Birdy. Whatever.
Age: Seventeen
RP Experience: I'm rather new.
How did you find us?: It came to me in a dream.Show your S K I L L S . . .(this is from the first rp I was ever a part of so don't eat me alive)
It was a nice dark night. From her loft Rosie could not see the entire sky, and there weren't really safe places to be outside in the wizarding world. Rosie was competent with a wand and everything, but she figured she wasn't competent enough to take on some Death Eaters if they decided she should be a victim.
So she was in the Muggle World. Okay, she really didn't like the Muggle world; everything was so much harder and she had to wear normal clothes. Clothes that were not nearly as warm as her robes, so she wasn't warm, but she wasn't cold, either. She could have sworn that the Muggle world was colder than the Wizarding World, but was it really just the lack of her robes that made her feel that way? Was it memories that made her feel strange and faraway there? She looked up at the moon, it was faraway that night, and she knew it seemed closer in her loft.
She would rather be in her loft, among the trinkets and knickknacks she didn't need, talking with a grumpy old spider who liked napping more than he liked the stars. She didn't understand him sometimes. She thought about the warmth and the heat and the books and the cocoa she could be making instead of this. But she wanted to look at the stars. Let's face it; she was addicted.
Her dark pea coat was over a navy-plaid skirt and a white blouse so she wasn't obnoxiously visible in the dark. She had a heavy comb with fake jewels attached, holding her yellow hair back off of her face and out of her eyes. She didn't wear heavy shoes, which was strange for her, but she wanted warmth more than she wanted height then.
She came to an open field and she let the snow crunch freshly under her feet. Hrothgar had stayed behind because of the cold weather and so there was now nothing that interfered with the silence. As she came to the spot she wanted to set up she looked around her for any Muggles that were in eyeshot. Seeing none she flicked out her wand, the ash feeling comforting against her bare hand. With a few words she let the telescope she brought in her pocket grow to its normal size as well as a small fold-up chair. Rosie pushed her old Ravenclaw scarf back over her shoulder as she kneeled to set up the telescope. There was luckily no wind so the tool had no problem staying on its rickety feet implanted into the snow.
Now that she was able to set up she took out her charts. She, unfortunately, would have to do the graphing by hand this time, which would probably result in a lot of smears and miscalculations. That's why she had an extra to mess up on all she wanted to before putting it on her final chart she had hanging on a wall in her apartment.
It was getting colder as the night drew on, and Rosie found herself shivering. She wondered if a little bluebell fire spell would hurt, though there were people passing nearby. What could a little fire for warmth hurt? It would obscure her vision just a bit, but it wouldn't hurt with what clusters she was looking at. Plus her telescope saw far enough for a fire to barely do anything.
She just wanted to be warmer, so she lit the tiny fire nearby, hoping that no one had noticed.
