InsaneJournal

IC -- General Information.
Name: Shelby Margaret Morrison
Alias: Shelb is the only nickname she’s ever really been given by anyone that stuck
Field Name: Mockingbird
Age and Birthdate: 17/April 19
Nationality: American

Genetic Information.
Mutation: Audio identification and mimicry.- Shelby can identify and mimc anything she hears. This includes everything- human voices, animal sounds, ambient noise or static, etc. The identification aspect of her powers does not work on an individual level, but a general one. She can’t identify a specific individual bird from their call, but she can tell you what exact species it is. It works similarly with people- unless she knows them in the first place, she can’t identify the specific person from their voice but can tell you exactly where they’re from according to their dialect. There is no actual comprehension occurring with her powers. Shelby can repeat Japanese back to someone all day long with perfect pronunciation and inflection, but she’ll have no Earthly idea of what’s actually been said.

Registered Mutant: Yes. Registration was a requirement before taking the Cure.

Personal Information.
Appearance: Blonde haired and blue eyed, Shelby’s about as all American girl next door as it gets. While Shelby isn’t overly tall, she does have long lanky limbs and is the kind of skinny that’s just shy of being unhealthy. The kind that has mothers constantly insisting she eat something and that runway models would kill for. Personally she’d really just like to have a little more in the boob department, even if it means packing on a few pounds, but her metabolism just won’t allow it. Clothing wise she’s squarely in the middle, neither extremely tomboyish nor extremely girly and keeps up with a lot of the things that are trendy and hip- as long as they can be found in the juniors department of the cheaper stores in the mall or something she can put together from organizing pieces she got from thrift stores. Being just skinny enough to sometimes fit into stuff at the end of the kids section does help a lot too, both cost wise and for wearing stuff no one else really does. Shelby alternates between cutesy trendy and edgy trendy, usually by the simple addition of dark eyeliner and punky/goth accessories to the former, and she can work both looks very well. Her wardrobe is by no means expensive and in most cases bargain basement, but Shelby does her best to make up for it by being creative and piling on accessories. She is an expert at taking a few articles of clothing and rearranging them for maximum outfit potential, so it’s not exactly easy to spot how often she might wear certain key pieces in her closet. Despite the cheapness of her attire, Shelby is generally well kempt and does put herself together well, partially out of necessity from NOT wanting to look like she has to stretch her dimes as much as possible when it comes to fashion.

Personality: Spunky and independent, Shelby has a step up on a lot of those her age in a few ways. She’s realized that no matter what you say or do, not everyone’s going to like you, and wasting energy trying to make them is just completely insane. Better to be disliked for being who you are than for someone you not. Though like most teenagers, it’s not a standard she always keeps to- case in point keeping her mutation a secret from so many people. Overall, she’s a pretty laid back person and has no problem going with the flow or getting along with others, but also won’t overly go out of her way to accommodate people. School wise Shelby is an A and B student, mostly A, and puts in the work to get her grades. The diligence isn’t born out of any passion for academics or even a particular subject, but the fact that she knows the only hope of someone in her financial situation actually going to college and changing things for herself is to have an academic record good enough to qualify for scholarships and other financial aid. Years ago she developed a love for video games which has only gotten stronger over time and of course was helped along even more when she started working at Gamestop. As gamers go, Shelby definitely falls on the cooler end of the spectrum and tends to dabble in everything a little bit, but not to the point of being in the ‘gaming is my LIFE’ category. Her dedication to bird watching seems completely random for just about everyone who knows about it, and she doesn’t exactly let people in on it easily to boot. But it’s more sentimental than anything else and over time Shelby’s realized that hey she actually does like hobby. It would be really easy for Shelby to be bitter with her mother about making sure she basically cutting her off from all information on her dad once he was gone, and while she is angry about it a lot of the time, at the same time she understands why her mom might have done it. And knowing James’ similar situation has been kind of like a confirmation that maybe her mom was right to do what she did. Still, every now and then she does have the idea to try and track her father just to be able to say she did and get his side of the story.

History:
• Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and has the accent to prove it.
• Only child of a single working mom. Dad cut out when she was about halfway through elementary school and they haven’t seen him since. Shelby seemed to deal with the abandonment with that ease that can only be exhibited by children who don’t want to fully comprehend or accept what’s going on.
• Her mother was bitter enough to quickly go from the denial to anger stage of reaction and pawned what she could of his stuff and tossed the rest.
• Shelby’s mother still doesn’t really like the topic of her dad and basically stopped talking about him once she accepted he was gone, and Shelby still has no idea why he left or exactly what led up to it.
• Her dad left early enough in her life that Shelby doesn’t have an abundance of vivid memories of him, but she has a few pictures and other things stowed away. Most of Shelby’s good memories of her dad include afternoons spent in Marine Park, feeding and watching the birds. Her father had a vague fascination with birds, could spout off random facts and often took a pair of binoculars along on their park trips so he and Shelby could get a closer look at whatever might be flying around.
• Before her mom got too crazy with the tossing her dad’s stuff out, Shelby managed to grab a few things and hide them away, including his binoculars, a few classification books on birds, and a journal he and Shelby used for a few different purposes, including sometimes chronicling the birds they saw while out and about.
• For a while Shelby carried the binoculars with her wherever she went and kept adding entries to the journal. She kept with the hobby even after the journal was full and she got a new along with better binoculars, keeping her dad’s tucked away in her room.
• Most of the families in her neighborhood were working class like hers and thus the kids who were old enough to not need a babysitter found themselves unsupervised for an amount of time from after school until when their parents got home from work.
• A lot of them hung around the local arcade and made that their regular haunt. While some of the parents weren’t exactly thrilled with their kids spending all of their free time on video games, at least they weren’t running around getting into trouble so they kept quiet about it.
• Whenever anyone in their group actually got a console of their own or a new game, they briefly became everyone’s new best friend. The honor rotated on a pretty regular basis, since none of their parents could afford every single gaming thing the kids drooled over but usually could afford a splurge every now and then.
• Even though her love of video games grew along with her love of bird watching, Shelby never really mentioned the latter to her mother or any of her friends.
• When Shelby started Middle School, alphabetical assigned seats put her desk directly behind a boy who had the same last name as her. Not a big deal but the proximity made idle and bored chatter easy, and they eventually discovered they had more in common than a last name.
• It turned out Shelby wasn’t the only child her father had abandoned, and James was her half brother through him. Comparing stories and swapping an old picture or two they managed to figure out that Shelby was a whopping two weeks older than James and their mothers either didn’t know or didn’t want to know about each other.
• James and Shelby kept quiet about their discovery and over the course of time developed a friendship anchored around the common thread of their absentee father.
• Sometime after her 12th birthday Shelby developed an uncanny knack for being able to tell what birds were around by sound without actually seeing them. She assumed this was from being a birdwatcher for so long.
• When she and her friends noticed she also developed an uncanny knack for perfectly mimicking the sound effects of any game she was playing Shelby started to think it might be more. She’d heard stories of mutants with powers who could do extraordinary thing but comparison, her own abilities just seemed- lame.
• Passing it off as some odd talent with most she knew, Shelby confided her suspicions only in James and her mother. James was just as intrigued at the possibility of Shelby being a mutant as she was, but her mother freaked and immediately had her tested for the X-gene, fearing that her only child was ‘one of those freaks.’ Of course, she was right.
• When news of the cure trails broke, Shelby’s mom did everything she could to make sure that Shelby would be able to participate. Shelby wasn’t nearly as excited- her powers were pretty tame so what did it even matter- but she went along with it anyway.
• Now 16, and old enough to have an official job to help out, Shelby was just grateful the trials didn’t interfere with her newly gained employment at Gamestop.
• Aside from a day or two where she had to miss school or call in sick to work, Shelby didn’t get any of the cure side effects and everything seemed to be going smoothly.
• Shelby was home alone the day everything went crazy. The first thing she did was grab the handgun and bullets her mom kept around for protection and didn’t think Shelby new about.
• First stop once out into the neighborhood was a gun store to get herself a better weapon and more ammunition after taking out the owner. She then swiped all the cash out of the register before heading back out.
• A few blocks away she met up with another mutant and went on a spree of robberies, mostly causing destruction as they went along as well as maiming/killing people. The cash they were gathering was almost an afterthought, though it did happen that one of their random victims had been leaving his store to go make a bank deposit and what they got from him spiked their total spoils quite a bit.
• When it was all over all both of them immediately panicked, tossed their weapons and pilfered cash into a nearby dumpster and fled in opposite directions.
• After pretty much sprinting a few blocks from the scene of her last crime, Shelby took a minute to stop freaking the fuck out and try to figure out what happened. That’s when she remembered the money. She wasn’t sure how much it had been, but it was more money than she’d ever seen in her entire life….and it was just sitting in a dumpster.
• Against her own better judgment Shelby went back, navigating through the panic going on in the aftermath, and found that her cohort had the same idea, arriving back a few minutes after she did. They quickly split the money and agreed to say they never got it back out of the dumpster before parting ways again.
• Shelby didn’t bother counting her half until she got home but was staggered that the total was a little over $10,000.
• Just like other mutants who had committed crimes that day, Shelby was taken in for questioning but eventually released without being charged.
• Thankfully the other mutant involved in her particular spree had stuck to their story about the money as well and there was so much chaos going on that day and afterwards things like evidence collection didn’t exactly happen in a timely manner. By the time the police got around to it the contents of the dumpster had already been emptied and transported to the nearest landfill. The weapons were never found and the money was assumed just as lost as well.
• While she was allowed to finish out the year at her own school, a few strong ‘suggestions’ from administrators and concerned parents made it clear that Shelby was not exactly going to be welcome in the King County school system next year. They also ‘suggested’ Shelby’s mother look into alternative locations for her to finish high school at, and mentioned Xavier’s as the main possibility.
• It would have been possible to wait until the fall for Shelby to move but her mom thought time to acclimate over the summer before classes started would help the transition, plus Shelby didn’t mind because so many of the people she knew now gave her odd looks or treated her differently.
• Being outed as a mutant clued Shelby in on who her real friends were as not all of them got all weird about it and some were supportive, promising her regular late night Halo sessions and to keep in touch once she moved, and James promised to keep in touch as well.
• Not wanting to miss out on an entire summer of paychecks she was going to need, Shelby managed to get transferred to a Gamestop closer to Xavier’s. Honestly, the manager was a little relieved since it saved him the trouble of finding a legitimate excuse to fire her and made Shelby someone else’s problem.
• Coming to the school from Brooklyn meant Shelby was near enough that it wasn’t necessary to pass through or an airport with extreme security measures so smuggling in her cash stash wasn’t an impossible feat. It’s now divided into neat little stacks and shoved between the mattresses in her dorm room.

Status: Student- junior

OOC Information.
Name: Ten
E-mail: scifispice80 at gmail.com
AIM: scifispice801
Time Zone: Central
PB: Taylor Momsen
Journal: nowhearthis
Canon or OC: OC
Non-Counted Plot Character or Normal: Mwahah? Idek.