Difference between revisions of "Callisto"

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''This page is about the [[:Category: Phase 2|Phase 2]] incarnation of the character. For other uses, see [[Callisto (disambiguation)]].''
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{{PCInfobox
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{{Phase2}}
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{{CharacterBox
 
| name    = Callisto
 
| name    = Callisto
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| image  = Callisto.jpg|Callisto
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| image  = Callisto-bio-pic.jpg|Callisto
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| pb = [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Moennig Katherine Moennig]
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| pb = [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannyn_Sossamon Shannyn Sossamon]
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| codename = Callisto  
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| codename = Callisto
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| teams  = [[Xavier Institute]] - Staff
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| teams  = N/A
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| birthdate = March 29th, 1979
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| birthdate = 29 Mar 1989
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| journal = [http://x-callisto.livejournal.com/profile the soothing light at the end of your tunnel]  
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| journal = [https://xp-callisto.dreamwidth.org/profile xp_callisto]
 
| player = [[Morag]]
 
| player = [[Morag]]
 
}}
 
}}
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Former leader of the [[Morlocks]], Callisto has re-emerged after years in hiding and found herself in the last place she ever expected to be.
 
  
  
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__TOC__
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''Callisto smash.''
  
  
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==Details==
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__TOC__
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'''Real Name:''' Unknown
 
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'''Aliases:''' Alexandra Gabler, Alex, Cal
 
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'''First Appearance:''' [http://community.livejournal.com/x_logs/2161238.html May 14th 2008]
 
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'''Place of Birth:''' New York, New York
 
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'''Citizenship:''' US
 
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'''Relatives:''' None known.
 
  
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'''Education:''' None on paper.
 
  
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'''Relationship Status:''' Single
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== Details ==
  
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'''Occupation:''' Various - odd-job person at the mansion, self-defense teacher, moonlighter for X-Factor Investigations
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'''Character Journal:''' [https://xp-callisto.dreamwidth.org/profile xp_callisto]
  
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'''Team Affiliation:''' N/A
 
  
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==Biography==
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'''Real Name''': Alex Gabler (note: not generally known)
  
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===The Early Years===
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'''Codename''': N/A
  
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Callisto's single mother choked on her own vomit when she was three years old. She remembers very little of her earliest years in care - only a vague blur, a string of foster homes and concerned faces. A beautiful child, with big, light eyes and soft dark waves of hair, she charmed prospective parents, but she was an impossible child - willful, volatile and troublesome, constantly getting into scrapes and breaking toys, chairs, cots, escaping her room and frequently the house itself. By the time she was six years old her default sullen pout had set in and beautiful or not, people stopped fostering.
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'''Aliases''': Callisto
  
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It was also when she was six years old that George the care worker took a special interest in her. The first time, she barely understood what was happening and was too shocked and confused to react at all. The second time, she broke his arm, and ran away.
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'''First Appearance''': [https://xp-logs.dreamwidth.org/3795239.html Dec 8th 2015]
  
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Naturally she was found, and from then on she officially became a Problem Child, with all the extra attention, security and discipline that that entailed. She was prescribed medication for ADHD and her violent tendencies, and frequently left alone for days locked in her room to "calm down". Callisto didn't calm down. When she was eleven she ran away and this time she wasn't found.
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'''Date of Birth''': March 29th 1989
  
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Even Callisto doesn't remember exactly what happened over the next few years. She moved from gang to gang, pickpocketing, housebreaking, carjacking. By the time she was fourteen her sullen pout had apparently become appealing again and this time she took cash instead of breaking arms.
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'''Place of Birth''': Scarsdale, New York
  
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She took the name Callisto at sixteen, on her first night in a strip club after breaking into Callisto Pharmaceuticals company to steal drugs (they didn't, as it turned out, have anything with any street value). She thought it sounded cool, and it shortened well. To this day no one has told her who Callisto mythically was and she has never asked. No one remembers her real name, and she claims not to remember it herself.
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'''Citizenship''': USA
  
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===The Morlocks===
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'''Relatives''': Parents, estranged
  
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[[Image:Callisto_Morlock.jpg|thumb|Callisto in her days as leader of the Morlocks]]
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'''Education''': High School graduate
  
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By the time she was seventeen the politics and equilibrium of the streets were changing. It had long been known and accepted by the homeless, the gangs, the squatters, that some of them were Different, but now that these "Mutants" were entering the consciousness of society at large they were being singled out, even here. Callisto knew she heard and saw things no one else could, was far stronger and faster than her frame should support, healed more quickly than any normal human being should - although following an idiotic teenaged brawl with [[Storm | another mutant]], a white-haired girl of around her own age, she was left with a nasty scar across her right eye that she wore a patch over for several years (see image), more out of affectation than any harm to the eye.
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'''Relationship Status''': Single
  
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But Callisto was lucky - her mutations were easy to conceal, to pass off as luck or guesswork or trickery. Others weren't so fortunate. Though her years of hard learned survival senses screamed at her to look out for herself, just as she always had, her conscience wouldn't allow her to just stand by and watch these people - her people - be beaten and ostracized even here on the streets. They needed someone to pull them together, a leader. Hiding her reluctance, Callisto became just that. The [[Morlocks]] (she didn't pick the name, doesn't remember who did - thought it sounded cool) descended into the sewers and underground tunnels of New York and made their home there, slowly growing in size until they were a large collective, relying on each other to survive.
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'''Occupation''': Hahahahahaha
  
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They had, however, caught someone's attention. The [[Morlock Massacre]] came as a complete shock to Callisto and her companions - it came from nowhere, utterly destroyed them, scattering the few survivors through the tunnels. Callisto, shot four times in the abdomen, near-death and deeply traumatised, dragged herself through the dark for days before she gained enough clarity of thought to leave the sewers.
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'''Team Affiliation''': N/A as yet
  
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Callisto was beaten. No amount of street vigilantism or crusading would match the sheer firepower and organisation of the opposition. Feeling her mortality in a way only the near-unkillable can, Callisto disappeared.
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== Biography ==
  
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===Watching and Waiting===
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===[[:Category: Phase 1|Phase 1]]===
  
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The next six years or so were a depressing, repetitive run of small-time criminal activities, sex-work, and occasional body guarding and mechanics work, any legal occupation hampered by her lack of official existence. In latter years, however, a good number of other mutants operating in the city came to her attention.
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''It should be noted that the Phase 2 incarnation of Callisto is a completely different person from Phase 1 Callisto, and as such their entire background is different right back to childhood.''
  
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Firstly, the white-haired woman who beat the hell out of her almost a decade ago on a more or less random encounter in the city. Callisto didn't know who the [[X-Men]] were or how exactly they operated, but with her instinctive ability to just Know other mutants, even in normal clothing/disguise, she'd been able to discern that Storm operated with a group of mutants who seem to work loosely with the city's authorities and help avert/deal with problems and emergencies. She didn't know how tight-knit or organised they were or how widely they operated, but she knew there was something going on there.
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===[[:Category: Phase 2|Phase 2]]===
  
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Furthermore, she knew nothing of [[X-Force]] or their activities, but following Storm she found [[The Brownstone | the brownstone]] entirely inhabited by mutants, and from that made an assumption that there was at least some peripheral connection. Although her surveillance was casual at best, over a year or so she become aware of [[Remy LeBeau|Remy]] and [[Ororo Munroe|Ororo's]] relationship - which frankly struck her as perfectly appropriate: he slaughtered almost everyone she knew a few years before, and Ororo gave her the scar on her face.
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==== Normal ====
  
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She also learned during this time that [[Sarah Morlocke]] was alive and living in the building. Suppressing her initial instinct to go to her, she kept half an eye on her for over a year, relieved to know she was alive and eaten by guilt over running away from her back when the massacre happened, too scared of being rejected to reveal herself now.
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Alexandra Gabler was born to normal parents in a normal New York suburb, and had a normal upbringing in a normal house. She went to a normal school, where she was a slightly above-average student - but nothing out of the norm. She was a keen gymnast and track'n'field athlete, but though she was described as 'showing promise', nobody considered her to be anything other than a normal kid who happened to be pretty physically gifted.
  
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===Gene Nation, and After===
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She was sixteen and on the way home from a party when everything changed.
  
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Callisto was eventually forced out of hiding when Sarah was kidnapped by the remains of the more hardline Morlocks, now a mutant terrorist cell calling themselves [[Gene Nation]]. She went to Ororo, who recognised her from their encounter as teenagers but nonetheless was convinced to go to Remy to co-ordinate a rescue effort. Following the defeat of Gene Nation's leader, Berserker, on the part of Ororo (since he refused to recognised a challenge from Callisto herself), the remaining members of the cell disbanded, mostly dissipating above ground to various shelters and squats. Ororo saw some of these mutants into programmes that would aid their survival and, if desired, reintegration into society. Initially her attempts to convince Callisto to aid in this project were entirely unsuccessful, but in her new capacity as a mechanic and general maintenance person at the mansion, the ex-Morlock slowly found herself drawn into helping out in spite of herself and was soon making regular visits to the shelters where the displaced mutants were located. [[Gene Nation (plot)|See the plot page for the full story]].
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==== The accident ====
  
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===Shake Hands With The Devil===
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It was a normal party at a friend of a friend's house. She was there with a group - two guys and another girl, loosely paired off in a somewhat experimental arrangement, nobody quite sure that they were that into their partners but sure that they definitely wanted to be 'dating'. Alex's sort-of-boyfriend was driving them home, just a shade before curfew, giggly and fired-up but perfectly sober. By contrast the SUV that went barrelling into them contained four drunk twenty-year-olds.
  
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In her new capacity as generic maintenance engineer at the mansion, Callisto found herself agreeing at short notice to accompany [[Red X]] on a mission to oversee and aid the first installation of a new low-tech, high-capacity water filtering system in a Red Cross camp in Sri Lanka. Due to regional politics that was entirely beyond Callisto's ken, the camp found itself filling with refugees from the surrounding area and essentially under-siege by the Indian military, including a mutant force 'Imperial Guard'.
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Meaning it was logically the college kids' fault, of course. They were the ones on the wrong side of the road. They were the ones who were drunk. They were the ones in the wrong. But then, they were dead, and so was everyone else, except Alex, and so somehow it felt an awful lot like her fault.
  
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Callisto was for the most part swept along, doing what she could to help along with the rest of the Red X team, but she did at one point venture outside the camp, unnoticed, to come to the aid of a civilian caught by an Indian soldier while attempting to reach the camp. Callisto was unable to save the civilian, and succeeded only in beating the soldier to the point of death, stopping only short of a killing blow. Unable to deal a blow that would at that point have been merciful she left both bodies, quietly re-entering the camp with the knowledge that for the first time in her life she had probably been directly responsible for the death of a human being. She told no one of the experience.[[Red X Mission: Shake Hands With The Devil | See the plot page for the full story.]]
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People looked at her funny after that. Somehow, word got out what had happened - that she'd gone flying through the windscreen, smashed into the other car and been tossed like a ragdoll out onto the road and somehow still been not just alive but conscious enough to be screaming in pain on the way to the hospital. Someone's mom was an EMT - someone else's was a nurse - piece by piece, a story seemed to emerge about painkillers that didn't work, about scratches and cuts that disappeared, about bones that seemed to have snapped like twigs but that after setting healed overnight, of fractures that just... went away, between one x-ray and the next.
  
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===Day Zero===
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And then there was the fact that once she was healed, her body seemed to just... work better than before. She was faster, stronger, more flexible. Where her form had been good it was now perfect, she could execute any move with barely any thought. Over time Alex couldn't bear the suspicious, calculating looks being thrown her way by her coach, and she quit gymnastics, quit athletics, and sleepwalked through the rest of high school, scraping by with the minimum of effort.
  
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When [[Day Zero | Manhattan Island was attacked and taken over by a group of mutants]], Callisto accompanied a team of combined X-Men and X-Force members, including Sarah Morlocke, into the old Morlock tunnels, acting as an extra pair of eyes and ears and a guide for the group along with Sarah. Following on from the experience, where for some time Sarah was missing, believed dead, the two former Morlocks had a chance to talk and went some way to healing their relationship, although they have a long way to go before everything's normal or easy between them.
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==== Dropping out ====
  
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===Life At Xavier's===
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Gone were ideas of college, whether with or without scholarships; gone was the bright or even 'normal' future she might once had looked forward to as Alex went off the rails in a singularly unspectacular fashion, going through the standard one, two, three, of getting a messy haircut, falling in with a bad crowd, and getting into trouble. She would have capped this off with tattoos and piercings except that none of them seemed to take, holes closing up and inks fading almost as soon as they appeared.
  
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In early 2009, Callisto became the new self-defence teacher following [[Angelo Espinosa|Angelo's]] departure to focus on [[Elpis]]. Initially sharing the job with [[Vanessa Carlysle|Morgan Lennox]], she then held the position with [[Alexander Lexington]], the two discussing the dilemma of preparing the students to defend themselves without severely injuring anyone with their powers.  
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The few years after high school featured a string of dead-end jobs and petty crime. Alex tried everything, running through the whole 'rebellion' playbook, though experiments with drugs and booze proved sadly underwhelming given their inability to make much of an impression on her formidable metabolism. Still she refused to accept or come to terms with what she was, the only explanation for what she could be - after all, she looked normal, and she sure as hell lived a normal existence, albeit an unsavory one. Maybe if she just ignored it, it would never come up.
  
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For the most part, Callisto kept to herself, assisting various mansion residents (and others, like [[Amanda Sefton]]) with their cars and hanging out sometimes with [[Garrison Kane]]. It was this connection, as well as her occasional work with [[Red X]], that got her into 'trouble', with her being involved in the [[Lakshmibai Raj| India/Pakistan situation]] and then going undercover with the [[X-Men]] at a mutant roller derby competition, ending up on skates herself after [[Wasp]] was injured.
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==== Home again ====
  
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She was also still called upon for her connections as former leader of the Morlocks, such as the incident where [[Annalee]] kidnapped the [[New Mutants]] and took them to the [[Morlock Tunnels]] to be 'safe'. With a group of X-Men and [[Sarah Morlocke]], Callisto helped [[My Long Forgotten Son|subdue the brain-washed kids]] and took Annalee into custody. After that, Callisto became even more hermetic than before.
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Sadly she hadn't banked on her roommate's asshole pimp boyfriend trying to intimidate her into working for him. Harsh words were exchanged, insults were thrown, and so was a slap to Alex's face, in return for which she broke the young man's jaw for him.
  
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===X-Factor Investigations===
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She barely remembers the next bit. She knows her friend pushed between them was thrown violently aside. She knows the boyfriend pulled a flick-knife. She remembers blood on her hands, only some of it her own, and intense pain, hot and stabbing and dull and thick all at the same time. She remembers sirens, and she remembers running.
  
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Due to her work at a [[District X]] shelter for homeless young people, Callisto ended up running into [[Warren Worthington]] while he was pursuing [[X-Factor Investigation: Cat vs. Bird|an X-Factor Investiations case]] in late 2011. Unable to turn down a request for help, Callisto was drawn into the hunt for a missing kid, and ended up agreeing to 'help out' XFI on a sporadic basis, reconnecting with sometime cordial acquaintance [[Vanessa Carlysle]], recently returned from [[The Problématique|her abduction experience]], and ending up moving into her spare room.
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Her cut-up face healed itself overnight, the half-dozen vicious slashes mostly disappearing without a trace, only a couple knitting back together badly and leaving her scarred. Her eye socket closed up entirely, leaving a mess of scar tissue in its place. This gave her a sort of grim satisfaction - finally her outsides matched what she really was: a monster.
  
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Callisto continued to return to the Mansion a few days a week to work in the garage and run self-defense training, and stepped up her volunteering work. She tentatively dipped her toe into the world of education, working toward a counselling qualification that might bring more funding into the shelter where she worked, and agreed to get more involved with XFI in due course.
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She was also on her own.
  
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===Deal With The Devil & Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart===
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She couldn't go back to her apartment - she wasn't even sure the guy was even alive. And she certainly couldn't go back home. So began life on the streets. [[Morlocks|The Morlocks]] found her more or less by accident; she was sheltering in an old abandoned subway station when Healer was doing the rounds, helping those who'd let him. Alex wasn't ill, but she was weak and near-delirious with hunger. A single touch and he knew she was a mutant, and brought her into the fold. Alex became Callisto, and Callisto became well-liked and respected, eventually becoming the Morlocks' de-facto leader.
  
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[[Bloodstone_Arc|In December 2013]], Callisto was one of several people abducted from the mansion by a horde of demons, taken to a small demonic dimension. While they escaped their captors their time in this Mini-Limbo warped them into darker versions of themselves, and by the time a group of 'pure in heart' X-Men came to rescue them, Callisto was almost unstoppable in her desolate, destructive rage, and wasn't stopped until she had been both engulfed in flames and had her back broken by Clarice with a teleported boulder.
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====X-contact====
  
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===Recuperation===
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[[Case File: A Better Mole Trap|In December 2015]] Callisto first made contact with [[Category:X-Factor|X-Factor Investigations]] over the deaths of homeless mutants. In the following months she was forced to rely ever more on X-Factor and the X-Men's aid and intervention as the Morlocks and their extremist faction, the [[Morlocks#Tunnelers|Tunnelers]], as they were attacked from within and without. As of 2018, she retains leadership of the underground community, much reduced and still licking their wounds after the death of their dearest member, Healer, with the Tunnelers, for now, keeping their cool. She continues to act as an informant for X-Factor.
  
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Callisto was burned over more than 90% of her body in the demonic dimension. Unfortunately the nature of her healing factor didn't deal with this very well, tending toward covering her in painful scar tissue. So began a long course of literally scores of skin grafts to attempt to repair the damage, leaving her covered in a network of scars.
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She dropped in and out for the next few years, helping with things like [[Fear in the Dark | a fight that threatened the entire city]] and [[Sons of Mutancy | taking down a cartel selling magic-infused weapons]]. In 2022, she assisted in rescuing [[Clan Akkaba | kidnapped kids]] and [[X-Men Mission: Town Called Malice | investigating a pocket cell of Clan Akkaba]].
  
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She additionally spent several months in a wheelchair due to her broken back, though once the spinal damage had repaired itself the rest of her recovery went quite quickly.
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== Physical Characteristics ==
  
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Her recuperation period was spend at the mansion, and during the course of it she had Adrienne help her move back there, her friendship with Vanessa having grown distant in the months before Callisto's abduction.
 
  
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==Physical Characteristics==
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'''Height''': 5ft 8in
  
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[[Image:Callisto_Tattoos.jpg|thumb|left|Callisto's tattoos]]
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'''Weight''': Slim in build but unnaturally heavy due to her density, tipping the scale at about 200lbs/90kg.
  
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'''Height:''' 5ft 8in
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'''Eyes''': Blue
  
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'''Weight:''' Callisto has a naturally slim and rather androgynous build, but due to her density she weighs around twice what you would expect, tipping the scale at about 200lbs/90kg.
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'''Hair''': Dark Brown - short, choppy, 'just-out-of-bed' in style.
  
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'''Eyes:''' Green/Grey/Hazel
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'''Other Features''':  Callisto has scars crossing her lips over her bad eye, the eye socket itself completely healed over with scar tissue. Theoretically, there may be a healed, sighted eye under there, but she has never let anyone perform surgery to find out. She wears a patch.
  
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'''Hair:''' Dark Brown - choppy, "just-out-of-bed" and generally somewhere between jaw and shoulder length at its longest.
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== Powers ==
  
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'''Other Features:'''
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=== Heightened senses ===
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===Prior to Deal With the Devil===
 
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''Piercings:'' Callisto used to wear various facial piercings, but has in recent years found that her body rejects foreign objects too quickly for them to last long. Sometimes she has usually self-inflicted surface piercings for fun or for a disguise, but they change as often as her clothing.
 
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''Tattoos:'' Around her left arm and down her left side, front and back, in a generically tribal sort of way that was cool when it was done and she just about pulls off now (see image).
 
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''Scars:'' Scar on the right side of her face, passing over but not affecting her right eye, another smaller scar on her right upper-lip, and four scars from large gunshot wounds on her abdomen.
 
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===Post Deal With the Devil===
 
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Callisto's former tattoos and scarring are gone, and she is instead covered in a network of scars from extensive and ongoing skin grafts.
 
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==Powers==
 
  
 
Callisto has super senses - incredibly acute hearing (speech a few rooms away, whispering through a wall), superhuman vision including night vision (due to this she's a little hypersensitive to bright light and makes more of a point than most of wearing shades in sunny weather) and heightened senses of taste and smell.
 
Callisto has super senses - incredibly acute hearing (speech a few rooms away, whispering through a wall), superhuman vision including night vision (due to this she's a little hypersensitive to bright light and makes more of a point than most of wearing shades in sunny weather) and heightened senses of taste and smell.
  
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She possesses superhuman reflexes (she could dodge a bullet but not a laser), balance (on a par with the world's best acrobats - but without having to think about it) and strength (car-lifting strength, not push-the-moon-out-of-orbit strength - never tested to its maximum). She's fast and has lots of stamina but doesn't possess a superhuman running speed (about 20 miles per hour). As such she also can't leap the proverbial tall buildings, although she can jump as far as any Olympic athlete and a good bit higher. Her hand-eye coordination is virtually perfect and she's functionally ambidextrous.
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=== Enhanced reflexes, balance and strength ===
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She heals more quickly than a normal human being, but not to excessive regenerative extents - she could heal even a bad break in the space of a day but can't regrow a limb, and serious wounds have in the past scarred - although mostly due to carelessness on her part during the record time her skin takes to knit back together. Her abilities would best (if embarrassingly) be compared to Buffy the Vampire Slayer at the height of her powers.
 
  
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Though not a mutant power as such, as a result of her grace and heightened senses Callisto can learn new physical skills, whether sports, weapon use or fighting styles, at an ''almost'' supernatural speed. She learns the moves no faster than an average human being, but with her physical condition her body will do exactly what she wants it to first time, entirely circumventing the physical discipline aspect of training and leaving her with only the memory aspect to master. In the unlikely event that it were to happen his would extend to the technical and muscle memory aspect of musical instruments also, although she wouldn't learn to ''read'' music any faster than a human with a good ear.
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She possesses superhuman reflexes (she could dodge a bullet but not a laser), balance (on a par with the world's best acrobats - but without having to think about it) and strength (car-lifting strength, not push-the-moon-out-of-orbit strength - perhaps around a tonne with effort). She's fast and has lots of stamina but doesn't possess a superhuman running speed (about 20 miles per hour). As such she also can't leap the proverbial tall buildings, although she can jump as far as any Olympic athlete and a good bit higher. Her hand-eye coordination is virtually perfect and she's functionally ambidextrous.
  
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Secondary power: As an extension to her super-senses, Callisto has an ability to find other mutants. She can't identify powers and can't find them on a map with her mind, but is naturally drawn towards them and just Knows somehow when she meets a mutant and, in a small group, would be able to make a good guess how many mutants there were. This was of considerable help to her during the early days of the Morlocks and helps to explain why they naturally gravitated towards her as a leader.
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=== Healing factor ===
  
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==Equipment==
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She heals more quickly than a normal human being, but not to excessive regenerative extents - she could heal even a bad break in the space of a day but can't regrow a limb (or an eye!), and really serious wounds (or those that knit together badly) can leave scars that last for some time though they will mostly eventually disappear. Her abilities would best be compared to Buffy the Vampire Slayer at the height of her powers.
  
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* Callisto generally carries at least two small fighting knives (weighted for throwing also) with her at all times, in ankle holsters, and if she thinks she might be heading into a risky situation will secrete more.
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=== And the rest ===
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* She's been known to employ knuckle dusters in the past.
 
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* She generally has a zippo lighter on her - she rarely smokes, but likes playing with fire.
 
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* Callisto rides a second-hand 2000 model [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki_Bandit Suzuki Bandit] that she bought as a near-wreck and fixed-up herself, and she doesn't care that everyone else has sexier vehicles than her.
 
  
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==Trivia==
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Though not a mutant power as such, as a result of her grace and heightened senses Callisto can learn new physical skills, whether sports, weapon use or fighting styles, at an almost supernatural speed. She learns the moves no faster than an average human being, but with her physical condition her body will do exactly what she wants it to first time, entirely circumventing the physical discipline aspect of training and leaving her with only the memory aspect to master. In the unlikely event that it were to happen his would extend to the technical and muscle memory aspect of musical instruments also, although she wouldn't learn to read music any faster than a human with a good ear.
  
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*Callisto wore an eye-patch during the whole period she led the Morlocks and was generally assumed to be blind in her right eye.
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Perhaps due to her combination of powers, Callisto also excels at small-scale combat tactics. She couldn't run an army, but in a skirmish-sized encounter she can assess the situation and see the best way to engage in any given conflict. This makes her an excellent squad leader - provided you can get past her attitude.
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*Although capable of learning any fighting style or sport in record time, Callisto has only ever learned to knife-fight, street brawl and play a mean game of basketball, though in recent years she's had brief brushes with archery and roller derby.
 
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*She has never fired a gun.
 
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*The alias 'Alexandra Gabler', used for her occasional above-board employment over the years, is taken from the name of a casual (not that Callisto has had any other kind) ex-lover. They bore a passing resemblance to each other and so Callisto stole her ID.
 
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*Callisto discovered during her first time flying in 'Shake Hands With The Devil' that, perhaps unsurprisingly, aeroplanes leave her with severe tinnitus and balance problems for hours afterwards.
 
  
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==Plots==
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A note on her bad eye: Working with one eye doesn't appear to affect Callisto's balance, depth perception or distance sight, though of course it's impossible to say how much more formidable she might have been by now was she fully-sighted. She can theoretically be outflanked on the right. In practice, her abilities combined make even this a daunting prospect for prospective assailants, who underestimate her other senses at their peril.
  
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===2008===
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== Equipment ==
  
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[[Gene Nation (plot)]]
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Callisto generally carries at least two small fighting knives (weighted for throwing also) with her at all times, and if she thinks she might be heading into a risky situation will secrete more. She's also a fan of knuckle dusters, particularly when up against foes with tough skin.
  
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[[Red X Mission: Shake Hands With The Devil]]
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== Trivia ==
  
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[[Krypteia]]
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Callisto is nearly always either hungry, or eating.
  
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[[Day Zero]]
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==External Links==
  
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===2009===
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[https://xp-communication.dreamwidth.org/tag/c:+callisto xp_communication posts]
  
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[[District X: Inferno]]
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[https://xp-journal.dreamwidth.org/tag/c:+callisto xp_journal posts]
  
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===2010===
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[https://xp-logs.dreamwidth.org/tag/c:+callisto xp_logs posts]
  
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[[Lakshmibai Raj]]
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== Plots ==
  
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===2011===
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===2015===
  
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[[X-Men Mission: Roller Derby Queen]]
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[[Case File: A Better Mole Trap]]
  
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[[My Long Forgotten Son]]
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===2016===
  
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[[Christian's Angels]]
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[[X-Men Mission: Fall of the Mutants]]
  
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[[X-Factor Investigation: Cat vs. Bird]]
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[[Operation: Mutant Massacre]]
  
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===2012===
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===2017===
  
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[[The Unwritten Alliance]]
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[[Green-Eyed Monster]]
  
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[[The End of the Beginning]]
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===2018===
  
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[[Step By Step]]
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[[Sins of the Father]]
  
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[[Savrola]]
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===2019===
  
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[[Onwards to Victory]]  
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[[Fear in the Dark]]
  
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[[The Dawn of Liberation]]
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===2021===
  
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[[Any Port in a Storm]]
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[[Sons of Mutancy]]
  
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[[Sonatorrek]]
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===2022===
  
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===2013===
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[[Clan Akkaba (plot)|Case File: Clan Akkaba - Inception]]
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[[Deal With The Devil]]
 
  
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[[Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart]]
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[[X-Men Mission: Town Called Malice]]
  
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==Meta==
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== Meta ==
  
 
'''Player''': [[Morag]]
 
'''Player''': [[Morag]]
  
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'''E-mail''': [[IMAGE:MarrogEmail.jpg]]
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'''E-mail''': [[IMAGE:marrogEmail.jpg|153px]]
  
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'''gchat''': as email address
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'''Google Hangouts''': As email above
  
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'''Player Icon Base''': [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Moennig Katherine Moennig] ([http://void.printf.net/~morag/random/x_project/caliisto.html photoshopped character picture gallery])
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'''Player Icon Base''': [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannyn_Sossamon Shannyn Sossamon]
  
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'''Errata''': Callisto was originally stated as being "Heavier than she looks but nonetheless pretty light." However, the player prompty forgot this, and instead she's been established as being, from her footstep and momentum, considerably heavier than someone her size should be. As such the bio has been amended.
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'''Meta Trivia'''
  
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Callisto wasn't Alex Gabler in Phase 1, but Gabler was a real person in the Phase 1 world who had a brief affair with the Phase 1 Callisto (and whose ID Cal stole to use as an alias). Do both women exist in both worlds, with a different woman getting the mutant X gene? If so Phase 1 Alex must be different from Phase 2 Alex in other respects also, as they're not even the same age. Still, it's an interesting question: is a human version of Phase 1 Callisto out there somewhere - or maybe even a different mutant version?
  
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[[Category: 2008]]
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[[Category: 2015]]

Latest revision as of 15:45, 16 January 2023

This page is about the Phase 2 incarnation of the character. For other uses, see Callisto (disambiguation).

PHASE 2
Callisto
Callisto-bio-pic.jpg
Portrayed by Shannyn Sossamon
Codename: Callisto
Affiliations: N/A
Birthdate: 29 Mar 1989
Journal: xp_callisto
Player: Morag


Callisto smash.



Details

Character Journal: xp_callisto


Real Name: Alex Gabler (note: not generally known)

Codename: N/A

Aliases: Callisto

First Appearance: Dec 8th 2015

Date of Birth: March 29th 1989

Place of Birth: Scarsdale, New York

Citizenship: USA

Relatives: Parents, estranged

Education: High School graduate

Relationship Status: Single

Occupation: Hahahahahaha

Team Affiliation: N/A as yet

Biography

Phase 1

It should be noted that the Phase 2 incarnation of Callisto is a completely different person from Phase 1 Callisto, and as such their entire background is different right back to childhood.

Phase 2

Normal

Alexandra Gabler was born to normal parents in a normal New York suburb, and had a normal upbringing in a normal house. She went to a normal school, where she was a slightly above-average student - but nothing out of the norm. She was a keen gymnast and track'n'field athlete, but though she was described as 'showing promise', nobody considered her to be anything other than a normal kid who happened to be pretty physically gifted.

She was sixteen and on the way home from a party when everything changed.

The accident

It was a normal party at a friend of a friend's house. She was there with a group - two guys and another girl, loosely paired off in a somewhat experimental arrangement, nobody quite sure that they were that into their partners but sure that they definitely wanted to be 'dating'. Alex's sort-of-boyfriend was driving them home, just a shade before curfew, giggly and fired-up but perfectly sober. By contrast the SUV that went barrelling into them contained four drunk twenty-year-olds.

Meaning it was logically the college kids' fault, of course. They were the ones on the wrong side of the road. They were the ones who were drunk. They were the ones in the wrong. But then, they were dead, and so was everyone else, except Alex, and so somehow it felt an awful lot like her fault.

People looked at her funny after that. Somehow, word got out what had happened - that she'd gone flying through the windscreen, smashed into the other car and been tossed like a ragdoll out onto the road and somehow still been not just alive but conscious enough to be screaming in pain on the way to the hospital. Someone's mom was an EMT - someone else's was a nurse - piece by piece, a story seemed to emerge about painkillers that didn't work, about scratches and cuts that disappeared, about bones that seemed to have snapped like twigs but that after setting healed overnight, of fractures that just... went away, between one x-ray and the next.

And then there was the fact that once she was healed, her body seemed to just... work better than before. She was faster, stronger, more flexible. Where her form had been good it was now perfect, she could execute any move with barely any thought. Over time Alex couldn't bear the suspicious, calculating looks being thrown her way by her coach, and she quit gymnastics, quit athletics, and sleepwalked through the rest of high school, scraping by with the minimum of effort.

Dropping out

Gone were ideas of college, whether with or without scholarships; gone was the bright or even 'normal' future she might once had looked forward to as Alex went off the rails in a singularly unspectacular fashion, going through the standard one, two, three, of getting a messy haircut, falling in with a bad crowd, and getting into trouble. She would have capped this off with tattoos and piercings except that none of them seemed to take, holes closing up and inks fading almost as soon as they appeared.

The few years after high school featured a string of dead-end jobs and petty crime. Alex tried everything, running through the whole 'rebellion' playbook, though experiments with drugs and booze proved sadly underwhelming given their inability to make much of an impression on her formidable metabolism. Still she refused to accept or come to terms with what she was, the only explanation for what she could be - after all, she looked normal, and she sure as hell lived a normal existence, albeit an unsavory one. Maybe if she just ignored it, it would never come up.

Home again

Sadly she hadn't banked on her roommate's asshole pimp boyfriend trying to intimidate her into working for him. Harsh words were exchanged, insults were thrown, and so was a slap to Alex's face, in return for which she broke the young man's jaw for him.

She barely remembers the next bit. She knows her friend pushed between them was thrown violently aside. She knows the boyfriend pulled a flick-knife. She remembers blood on her hands, only some of it her own, and intense pain, hot and stabbing and dull and thick all at the same time. She remembers sirens, and she remembers running.

Her cut-up face healed itself overnight, the half-dozen vicious slashes mostly disappearing without a trace, only a couple knitting back together badly and leaving her scarred. Her eye socket closed up entirely, leaving a mess of scar tissue in its place. This gave her a sort of grim satisfaction - finally her outsides matched what she really was: a monster.

She was also on her own.

She couldn't go back to her apartment - she wasn't even sure the guy was even alive. And she certainly couldn't go back home. So began life on the streets. The Morlocks found her more or less by accident; she was sheltering in an old abandoned subway station when Healer was doing the rounds, helping those who'd let him. Alex wasn't ill, but she was weak and near-delirious with hunger. A single touch and he knew she was a mutant, and brought her into the fold. Alex became Callisto, and Callisto became well-liked and respected, eventually becoming the Morlocks' de-facto leader.

X-contact

In December 2015 Callisto first made contact with over the deaths of homeless mutants. In the following months she was forced to rely ever more on X-Factor and the X-Men's aid and intervention as the Morlocks and their extremist faction, the Tunnelers, as they were attacked from within and without. As of 2018, she retains leadership of the underground community, much reduced and still licking their wounds after the death of their dearest member, Healer, with the Tunnelers, for now, keeping their cool. She continues to act as an informant for X-Factor.

She dropped in and out for the next few years, helping with things like a fight that threatened the entire city and taking down a cartel selling magic-infused weapons. In 2022, she assisted in rescuing kidnapped kids and investigating a pocket cell of Clan Akkaba.

Physical Characteristics

Height: 5ft 8in

Weight: Slim in build but unnaturally heavy due to her density, tipping the scale at about 200lbs/90kg.

Eyes: Blue

Hair: Dark Brown - short, choppy, 'just-out-of-bed' in style.

Other Features: Callisto has scars crossing her lips over her bad eye, the eye socket itself completely healed over with scar tissue. Theoretically, there may be a healed, sighted eye under there, but she has never let anyone perform surgery to find out. She wears a patch.

Powers

Heightened senses

Callisto has super senses - incredibly acute hearing (speech a few rooms away, whispering through a wall), superhuman vision including night vision (due to this she's a little hypersensitive to bright light and makes more of a point than most of wearing shades in sunny weather) and heightened senses of taste and smell.

Enhanced reflexes, balance and strength

She possesses superhuman reflexes (she could dodge a bullet but not a laser), balance (on a par with the world's best acrobats - but without having to think about it) and strength (car-lifting strength, not push-the-moon-out-of-orbit strength - perhaps around a tonne with effort). She's fast and has lots of stamina but doesn't possess a superhuman running speed (about 20 miles per hour). As such she also can't leap the proverbial tall buildings, although she can jump as far as any Olympic athlete and a good bit higher. Her hand-eye coordination is virtually perfect and she's functionally ambidextrous.

Healing factor

She heals more quickly than a normal human being, but not to excessive regenerative extents - she could heal even a bad break in the space of a day but can't regrow a limb (or an eye!), and really serious wounds (or those that knit together badly) can leave scars that last for some time though they will mostly eventually disappear. Her abilities would best be compared to Buffy the Vampire Slayer at the height of her powers.

And the rest

Though not a mutant power as such, as a result of her grace and heightened senses Callisto can learn new physical skills, whether sports, weapon use or fighting styles, at an almost supernatural speed. She learns the moves no faster than an average human being, but with her physical condition her body will do exactly what she wants it to first time, entirely circumventing the physical discipline aspect of training and leaving her with only the memory aspect to master. In the unlikely event that it were to happen his would extend to the technical and muscle memory aspect of musical instruments also, although she wouldn't learn to read music any faster than a human with a good ear.

Perhaps due to her combination of powers, Callisto also excels at small-scale combat tactics. She couldn't run an army, but in a skirmish-sized encounter she can assess the situation and see the best way to engage in any given conflict. This makes her an excellent squad leader - provided you can get past her attitude.

A note on her bad eye: Working with one eye doesn't appear to affect Callisto's balance, depth perception or distance sight, though of course it's impossible to say how much more formidable she might have been by now was she fully-sighted. She can theoretically be outflanked on the right. In practice, her abilities combined make even this a daunting prospect for prospective assailants, who underestimate her other senses at their peril.

Equipment

Callisto generally carries at least two small fighting knives (weighted for throwing also) with her at all times, and if she thinks she might be heading into a risky situation will secrete more. She's also a fan of knuckle dusters, particularly when up against foes with tough skin.

Trivia

Callisto is nearly always either hungry, or eating.

External Links

xp_communication posts

xp_journal posts

xp_logs posts

Plots

2015

Case File: A Better Mole Trap

2016

X-Men Mission: Fall of the Mutants

Operation: Mutant Massacre

2017

Green-Eyed Monster

2018

Sins of the Father

2019

Fear in the Dark

2021

Sons of Mutancy

2022

Case File: Clan Akkaba - Inception

X-Men Mission: Town Called Malice

Meta

Player: Morag

E-mail: MarrogEmail.jpg

Google Hangouts: As email above

Player Icon Base: Shannyn Sossamon

Meta Trivia

Callisto wasn't Alex Gabler in Phase 1, but Gabler was a real person in the Phase 1 world who had a brief affair with the Phase 1 Callisto (and whose ID Cal stole to use as an alias). Do both women exist in both worlds, with a different woman getting the mutant X gene? If so Phase 1 Alex must be different from Phase 2 Alex in other respects also, as they're not even the same age. Still, it's an interesting question: is a human version of Phase 1 Callisto out there somewhere - or maybe even a different mutant version?

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