Difference between revisions of "Sarah Vale"

Revision as of 14:41, 17 November 2014

PHASE 1

Sarah Vale
File:Networkid.png Portrayed by Lucy Hale
Codename:	Network
Affiliations:	X-Factor
Birthdate:	June 7, 1994

Journal:	x_network
Player:	Jeff

Sarah is a technopath who attended Xavier's for powers training once her abilities manifested. She left in September 2009 after having spent barely a month on her first stay at Xavier's, but later returned in February 2011.

Details

Character Journal: 01101101011010010110111001100101

Real Name: Sarah Vale

Codename: Network

Aliases: Mutate 1337

First Appearance: June 9, 2009

Date of Birth: June 7, 1994

Place of Birth: Washington, DC

Citizenship: American

Relatives: Mariska Kardos (mother), Thomas J. Vale (father), Jessica (sister, twin)

Education: Junior

Relationship Status: In a relationship with Layla Miller

Occupation: Girl Friday at X-Factor Investigations

Team Affiliation: X-Factor

Biography

Childhood

Sarah was born eleven minutes before her sister Jessica to Mariska and Thomas Vale, college sweethearts, in early June of 1994. The small family made their home in Washington, DC close to both sets of grandparents: The Vales, an influential family with political connections and the Kardoses, first generation immigrants from Hungary via Canada. A quiet, normal existence highlighting the American Dream but one not without its problems.

Thomas, an up-and-coming lobbyist on the Hill, and Mariska, a consultant, spent little time at home due to their careers and thus, even less time with their daughters or each other. When the family did happen to be together, the time was usually short and full of awkwardness and tension. Neither parent made an effort to hide their frustrations from their children: Thomas wishing his wife would stay home with their daughters, Mariska resenting him for it along with his efforts to pass various legislation she did not support. This unhappiness eventually lead to the demise of their marriage and when they divorced, both Sarah and Jessie, aged ten, moved with their mother to a smaller home on the other side of town, closer to Mariska's consulting firm and parents.

Bouncing back and forth between homes was difficult but manageable for the twins. Sarah remained a good student; best in her Math and Science courses and she while continually had difficulty in her foreign language classes, she mastered Binary, often times rattling off curses under her breath in a series of 1s and 0s instead of the words she'd so often heard from her maternal grandfather's mouth. Shy, Sarah's social circle barely extended past her sister and included no after school activities.

Otherwise, Sarah lived a normal teenager's life until one day while working on an English project, her computer "answered" a question she'd muttered out loud to herself by pulling up a needed webpage. Convincing herself it was a glitch, Sarah told no one of the incident until a week later while arguing with Mariska about spending time with Thomas, she accidentally used her powers to influence her mother's car, nearly sending them off the road when she voiced a desire to 'go home.' A short time after, Sarah was pulled from their traditional high school and made to finish her freshman year at home with a tutor for fear of rising anti-mutant bullying and protests. During Spring Break, Mariska and Thomas put their differences aside long enough to decide that she needed more help than they could provide and through Thomas' connections on the Hill, discovered Xavier's.

Living At The X-Mansion

Sarah's initial time at Xavier's was brief. Unhappy about being separated from her twin sister, who had not shown any indication of manifesting, Sarah found the strangeness of living in a school full of mutants unsettling. Her discovery that the friendly purple cat that she had befriended was in fact one of her classmates was an unwelcome shock, and while the two girls resolved things, Sarah was rarely comfortable with those with obvious mutations. She enjoyed working with Forge, however, who had adopted her as his protegee and made a few friends.

It was not enough, however, to combat her homesickness and after a month her parents decided to curtail the experiment. Sarah returned home, with the potential of returning at another time, possibly if - or when - her sister manifests.

Returning To The X-Mansion

After realizing the responsibility having powers meant, and after having a good heart-to-heart conversation with her nana, Sarah decided to return to Xavier's, arriving at the end of February, 2011. This time she was determined to stay and overcome both her inabilities to properly use/control her powers and her uncomfortableness around those with physical mutations.

Upon her return, she moved into a bedroom by herself in her own suite. It was hard to find out that both Forge and Catseye were no longer there, since she had grown close to them both in different ways. She formed new friendships, however, and resumed old ones, including hanging out with Matt and Yvette, to name a few people.

Trial By Fire

Since her return, Sarah has been involved in several incidents in and around the Mansion. Her and several of her classmates had to deal with several annoying ghosts that they had accidentally summoned, and they successfully accomplished the spirits' several tasks in order to put them to rest. Sarah was also one of several young mutants ferreted off to the Morlock tunnels by Artie's mother, Annalee, who were temporarily deceived into thinking that was their proper home, until the spell was broken and they were freed. Not too long after that, Jean and the remaining people inside the Mansion were attacked over the July 4th long weekend, where several of them were exposed to their worst nightmares. It was an extremely traumatic experience for Sarah, as she was captured and had her face seemingly permanently scarred and carved up by none other than Hank, who tortured her mercilessly. It was all a nightmare, however, but the psychic pain lasted for several days afterward and the memories of the event will never, ever be forgotten.

I Get A Kick Out Of You

For Yvette's 19th birthday party, the VIP lounge at Silver was rented for an all ages party, and Sarah was one of the guests. Unbeknownst to the party goers, Toad and Mister M were testing out an aerosol delivered form of Kick at the club that evening, which caused both Laurie and Pixie's powers to go into overdrive. Pixie dust and pheromones are rampant, creating a vague love-in, with everyone grooving to the music and loving everybody else. For Sarah, it lead to her awkwardly asking Callie to hang out and see some movies, feeling very open and outgoing thanks to all of the chemicals. Upon later reflection, she wondered if she'd asked Callie out on a date or not, and was a little conflicted about her attractions.

Growing Up

Sarah became fast friends with a new arrival to the school, Layla Miller, who she bonded with during a plot to sabotage Kyle's cellphone. She used her abilities to install a certain ringtone on Kyle's phone, and established a Bluetooth connection between Layla's phone and Kyle's phone that allowed the former to activate the ringtone on the latter whenever Layla wanted.

Following that, Layla and Sarah began to hang out regularly, with Layla taking Sarah into the city to shop for a costume for Hallowe'en. She ended up buying a leather corset and matching pants, along with a whip, which made for an interesting night when things went completely crazy. Layla managed to disarm her and made sure she didn't get into any trouble, even when Sarah was taken over by the Red persona that was pretty aggressive in its flirting with her. After the events ended, Sarah remembered everything the persona had said and done while possessing her, but she never told Layla this and if it's up to her she'll never know.

The girls continued to spend a lot of time together, causing Sarah to reflect on her own sexuality in general and her feelings for Layla in particular. She had already been questioning her sexuality thanks to her earlier incident with Callie but now things were quickly coming to the point where she'd have to take a long, hard look at herself and her feelings. Not knowing whether Layla may or may not return the feelings she might have for her made it difficult for Sarah to explore the idea any further, and with the Thanksgiving break and then Christmas coming up she was able to delay thinking about things seriously, though she knew the time would have to come soon enough.

Girl Friday

Shortly before Christmas Sarah began working with X-Factor| XFI as their Girl Friday, mainly working on weekends as a receptionist and general go-getter/gopher. Her duties included answering the phone, taking messages, dealing with incoming clients, transcribing and typing up things, and digitizing most of the office's documentation. While she was nervous at the beginning, she's really grown to enjoy the position, so much so that she worked extra shifts during the Christmas holiday when she returned to Xavier's.

She's enjoyed working with her fellow mutants in the office, in particular Bishop and Copycat. Working there is giving her a sense of accomplishment and usefulness - she feels like she's contributing to the office, even if only in a small manner, and the thought of looking to work with them after graduation has crossed her mind, if they'd have her.

Happy New Year

Christmas time wasn't all merry and jolly for Sarah, mainly because of Layla's troubles during that particular time of year - her parents were killed just before New Year's, making Christmas, Layla's birthday, and New Year's all more or less miserable for the poor girl - and how they affected her. The stress and strain of the holidays and her past took its toll on Layla and, during a walk in the woods with Sarah, the younger girl passed out, leaving Sarah to get help for her. Layla spent a lot of time recovering in the med lab after that and, along with the manifestation of her friend (and Layla's suitemate) Maddie's powers that resulted in her being kept under watch for awhile, it was a hard start to the year for Sarah. Thankfully both girls recovered in a relatively short amount of time and things started to look up again.

Layla and Sarah resumed where they'd left off before the chaos that was the Christmas season, namely spending most nights together watching movies. Depending on the movie - Layla leaned towards horror and action films, while Sarah favoured romantic comedies and drama - one or both of the girls would often fall asleep on the other, using the one another as a pillow, and sometimes both would pass out this way. It got to the point where both of them had good reason to suspect the other may have feelings for them, but being young and inexperienced neither quite knew what to do or what to say.

Everything came to a head one night in early February, which started out as just another night watching a movie together. A playful pillow fight lead to them falling together on the floor, Layla on top of Sarah, and they both finally realized that there was something there between them. They gave up on the movie, instead retreating to the privacy of Layla's bedroom where they build a make shift fort out of blankets and a mattress. There in that fort they shared their first kiss, Layla taking the initiative and making the first move and Sarah more than happy to reciprocate.

Even though her feelings for Layla were never in doubt, this even lead to her asking more questions about herself and who she was. Because of her feelings toward Layla, which had been present for quite some time but either repressed or ignored, she was vaguely aware that she was attracted to other girls. That didn't mean she was 100% clear on her sexual orientation, which was a big deal to her; she wanted to know exactly who she was in order to be more comfortable about herself. She sought out advice from friends and the school, firstly e-mailing Meggan about the big news with Layla, since she'd vaguely talked about her crush without naming names (or genders) with the girl before Christmas.

Genosha

After the arrival of two Genoshan citizens at Xavier's, the rest of the students and, soon enough, the world became aware of the plight of mutants in Genosha. Sarah didn't interact with the new arrivals but, as news of the Genoshan situation came out, she became interested in the cause and wanted to attend a protest in relation to the same.

It was at this protest that she and many of her friends and fellow mutants were kidnapped by the Genoshans and taken back to their homeland, where Sarah was among one of the mutants selected for the mutate program. Against her will, she was turned into a weapon for the Genoshans, her powers weaponized and enhanced in order to make her all the more deadly, becoming a slave to them via her handler, Commander Semoko.

After the initial rescue attempt failed horribly, the reformed mutant resistance teams eventually took down Moreau and freed their fellow mutants and many others, including Sarah. Those who were made into mutates were reverted back to their former selves, mercifully unable to remember anything from their time as slaves to the Genoshan magistrates. There was one side effect, namely to Sarah's powers, which were changed along with all of her fellow mutates. In Sarah's case, her powers increased and she became able to use them on objects without having to touch them, at least over fairly short distances, and her general ability to control things became stronger overall.

Post-Genosha

Upon returning home from Genosha, Sarah and Layla spent practically every moment together, waking and non-waking, becoming nearly inseparable. With Sarah having lost all of her hair from the mutate process, along with the psychological ramifications from everything that had happened to her in Genosha, she stayed holed up at home with her girlfriend and didn't get out much at all.

Over time, she emerged from hiding and slowly started to integrate herself back into the school. A big part of that healing process was due to the arrival of her twin sister, Jessie, at the mansion. With her sister's manifestation and subsequent relocation to Xavier's, along with Sarah's graduation from high school and having to move rooms, she became Jessie's roommate and started spending more time with people other than Layla.

Not having applied for any colleges or universities, Sarah decided to increase her time working with XFI for the fall, taking a semester off of school, and she'll apply for school in the winter semester instead.

The Quiet Life

Sarah started school in January, starting her first semester at Empire State University in January 2013. She tried to help investigate some strange goings on with Adrienne Frost in March, helping Doug Ramsey to inspect Adrienne's computer (neither found anything). She also found herself struggling with the departure of Layla, who had gone to Attilan to study, but she tried to distract herself with more important things, like work and Star Wars.

Physical Characteristics

Height: 5'3"

Weight: 128lbs

Eyes: Brown

Hair: Brown

Other Features: Two piercings in each ear. Taste in accessories runs towards steam/cyber punk.

Powers

Sarah is a technopath; she can communicate with and control machines of all types, including computers.

Initially upon her return to the mansion, her powers were limited by several factors as they wew still relatively untrained and underdeveloped. Since further training, however, and since recovering from the mutate process she underwent in Genosha, her powers have strengthened from their earlier levels.

In order for her to communicate with a machine, it must be connected to a power source (plug, remote, battery) and it must be turned on. Sarah no longer has to make physical contact with the machine or to speak her commands out loud in order to control it, however, though with more complicated or unfamiliar equipment doing either or both would help increase her control. In general, the simpler the machine, the easier it is for her to connect with.

There is no one type of machine across the board she is most comfortable with but rather her 'relationship' grows with each individual machine as she becomes more familiar with it; her laptop being what she has 'connected' the best with so far.

Equipment

Laptop, iPod, and cellphone.

Trivia

- Had a serious feud with the toaster in the kitchen of the mansion. After the events of Yvette's birthday party at Silver they apparently made up, however.

- Is a huge Star Wars fan.

- Is taking fencing lessons with Kurt.

- Had her powers enhanced after recovering from the mutate process she underwent in Genosha.