Yvette Petrovic
"She's an adorable ball of can't-touch-yet..." Angelica Jones
Contents
Details
Character Journal: [x_penance]
Real Name: Yvette Petrovic
Codename: none
Aliases: none
First Appearance: [August 28, 2006]
Date of Birth: August 8, 1992
Place of Birth: Kosovo
Citizenship: Kosovo
Relatives: Eva Petrovic (mother)
Education: Student at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters
Relationship Status: Single
Occupation: Freshman
Team Affiliation: None
Biography
Childhood
Yvette was born two years after hostilities began in Kosovo after the rise of Slobodan Milosevic as a political force. The area was a dangerous place to be with ancient ethnic tensions rising again and Milosevic's armed gangs running rampant through the country. Her mother Eva was a teenager at the time conflict broke out - she lived with her Muslim family in a small rural village. At eighteen Eva was attacked and raped by a gang of Milosevic's men and her father and brother taken - they were never seen again. Eva survived the experience but subsequently discovered she was pregnant. Driven out of their village by the escalating violence and the ostracism of their neighbours, Eva and her mother fled, eventually reaching a refugee camp run by Medicans Sans Frontiers and the Red Cross. Eva gave birth to Yvette shortly afterwards, a month premature - the baby was named at Eva's request by the French doctor attending the birth.
Eva's mother died the following winter and Eva and her daughter spent the next several years at various refugee camps, frequently in squalid conditions. Eventually the Red Cross was able to reunite Eva with relatives living in Sarajevo - her father's relations who she'd had little contact with and who had suffered their own losses during the conflict. They reluctantly took Eva and her daughter in, seeing her as bringing shame on the family by being an unmarried Muslim girl with a child. Yvette was tolerated, frequently referred to by the family as Eva's 'penance' for the crime of allowing herself to be dishonoured and for rejecting their faith. The name stuck and became a sort of nickname for the small girl. When Yvette was seven, NATO bombed Kosovo in a series of strikes against Milosevic - it was commonplace for Yvette and her family to have to hide in the basement of their apartment block during raids and several friends and neighbours were killed or injured, including Eva's uncle, the head of the household.
When the war ended, Eva moved out of her relatives' apartment and found work in a factory to support herself and her daughter. She became a hard, uncompromising woman determined to survive whatever what might come next. She and her daughter both had degrees of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Eva's surfacing in bouts of depression, mood swings and an obsession with the war - she told her daughter everything, including how she was conceived, and these stories had their impact on Yvette. She grew into a quiet, withdrawn girl, seldom talking to her classmates and frequently hiding in closets and under tables when confronted by something unpleasant. In post-war Kosovo she was merely one more traumatised child among the thousands and never saw anything dysfunctional in either her origins or her family situation.
At twelve and a half, Yvette's power manifested - patches of her skin would become thick and hard and turn dark red, but always returned to 'normal' after a few days or weeks. She managed to hide this from her mother and teachers for around six months. When Eva found out, she panicked, thinking Yvette would become a target much as Eva and her family had become targets because of their ethnicity. She removed Yvette from school and refused to let her out of their apartment or near the windows during daylight hours - for her own protection. Government services and police because involved approximately four months later, following up reports from neighbours that something strange was going on. Yvette was removed from her mother's care and placed in a State-funded institution for the safety of others. During her three months there she was targeted by her fellows and became even more withdrawn, her power 'on' more often than not and the physical changes becoming more apparent - her hands, feet and hair began to change as well and her skin became tougher.
Unknown to those who ran the institution, an enterprising staff member was making himself a tidy amount of money, 'selling' the more obviously mutant children to a European-based human trafficking ring similar to that encountered by the X-Men in X-Men Mission: Trans-Siberian Hustle and claiming they had escaped. Yvette became his most recent investment and she was taken from the institution one night and handed over. The shock and the harsh treatment drove her further and further into herself, to the point where she became catatonic and her skin virtually impenetrable and razor-sharp, barely resembling a human being any more.
Living At The X-Mansion
Purchased by a desperate Marius in France in order to help with his powers, Yvette remained in a catatonic state even after their rescue. Professor Xavier and David Haller worked in concert to telepathically encourage her to come out of her withdrawn state. Awakening to a strange environment with little memory of the last six months, she initially panicked and fled, retrieved by Paige. She adapted quickly, making several friends. Including Tommy Jones, bonding over a mutual love of poetry.
The school tracked down Yvette's mother and Yvette returned to Kosovo for several weeks. The extremes of her mutation caused her problems and the stress of the situation exacerbated things and Yvette and her mother decided that she school would be the best place for her to learn control. She returned to the school as a student in November, rooming with Laurie Collins and attending classes with the other freshmen, Forge's self-repairing cloth helping her to not destroy things and hurt people through casual contact in the meantime.
Physical Characteristics
Height: 3' 11"
Weight: 140 lbs.
Eyes: Glowing electric blue, no pupils or irises
Hair: Dark red
Other Features: Yvette is a rather small, slight fourteen year old. Before her powers surfaced she was a pretty girl with long dark brown hair, brown eyes and a slightly elfin face. When she arrives at the mansion her skin is a dark red in hue, so dense it seems to absorb light so she seems constantly shadowed. Her hands, feet and hair all end in long sharp spikes - the last joints of her fingers and toes are elongated and very dense and sharp, forming talons. She also has trouble maintaining an upright posture and tends to drop into a crouching position.
Powers
Yvette's powers are potentially to have control of her body on a molecular level. There are some limitations -- her body has to stay the same basic shape (re: the fact that her "claws" are still finger-shaped as opposed to fusing into one big knife), but within that limitation she can adapt the specifics pretty much any way she wants. Key word here is "potentially." At the time she's discovered, she pretty much only has the sharp, super-dense skin and spiky hair, hands and feet and the trauma associated with her powers will mean she has immense difficulty learning to control them. Eventually she'll be able to change the density of specific parts of her body (such as making 'armour' or turning her hands/feet into weapons) and effect small physical repairs but not for many years yet. Her powers also mean she weighs considerably more than her size would suggest.
Equipment
Various suits of self-repairing material invented by Forge that allow her to interact with her environment without damaging things or people.
Trivia
Marius and Jennie refer to Yvette as "Penny", having been told that was her name by the slavers who sold her.
Apples are Yvette's favourite food and she frequently leaves them for people who she wants to connect to.
Plots
Meta
Player: Rossi
E-mail: wytchbrat@gmail.com
AIM: wytchbrat
Player Icon Base: [Jodelle Ferland]
Meta Trivia
