Topaz

PHASE 1

PHASE 2

Topaz
Portrayed by Naomi Scott
Codename:	Topaz
Affiliations:	X-Force
Birthdate:	March 10, 1997 (Adopted)

Journal:	I'm the fury in your head
Player:	Sam

She did love this part. Mutants, that was fine. But magic? That was where the line was drawn.

Student, volunteer-librarian, mutant, witch's apprentice, and all-around lazabout. Topaz is basically an average-early twenties human being, still trying to find her place in the world and figure out who she is outside of the people around her.

Details

Character Journal: xp-topaz

Legal Name: Vimala Ashdown

Birth Name: Kiah Saini

Codename: Padawan (Amanda), November (Marie-Ange) (she rejects the notion of codenames in general and refuses to settle on one)

Aliases: Topaz (What she is mostly known by and will answer to); Gemstone; G; T

First Appearance: October 30, 2012

Acknowledged/Adopted Date of Birth: March 10, 1997

Actual Date of Birth: June 5, 1997

Place of Birth: India

Citizenship: Dual: Indian, British (through adoption)

Relatives: Luca Ashdown, “Taboo” (adopted father); Alice Ashdown (adopted mother; deceased); Aadesh Saini (biological father). Leela Saini (biological mother; presumed deceased)

Education: Graduated from Bayville High in 2015. Seniorish at New York University studying psychology and library science

Relationship Status: Single; Formerly dated Frank Ludlum

Occupation: Student; Formerly volunteer, now paid librarian at Xavier's

Team Affiliation: X-Force

Biography

Growing Up

Topaz’s story starts at the young age of one when, in the dead of night, she was abandoned on the doorstep of a small orphanage in Northeast India. Nobody saw who left her there, and the only evidence as to who her parents might have been was the necklace hanging around her neck - a small, amber-colored topaz pendant. It was from this that the child received the nickname “Topaz,” as no one knew her real name. The orphanage workers eventually named her Vimala (meaning “pure”), but the nickname stuck - growing up she was called “Topaz” more than “Vimala,” and hardly ever answered to the latter.

The next six years of Topaz’s life were spent in the orphanage. It was hardly an easy life - Topaz, small for her age, was often the target of the bigger kids she lived with, and the overtaxed orphanage workers couldn’t always help her. As a result, she was forced early on to learn how to defend herself. She wasn’t always successful at this - though there was one notable incident when she was five that involved an eight year old and a stick. The incident ended with the eight year old nearly getting his eye poked out. This led to a severe punishment for Topaz, but it also made some of the kids wearier about trying to mess with her.

Finally, when Topaz was seven, she found herself facing changes in the life she had become so used to. A British couple (the Ashdowns) had come the orphanage and, after seeing the kids and interacting with a few of them (including Topaz), the couple inquired about adopting Topaz. This brought up surprisingly mixed feelings for the child - the obvious joy at being able to escape orphanage life, but also a bit of fear, as this was the only life she’d ever known, and even if it wasn’t the best, it was what she was comfortable with. However, the Ashdowns were persistent, and it didn’t take long for Topaz to warm up to the idea.

The adoption process took just over a year - Topaz was eight when the Ashdowns finally brought her into their small, comfortable home in Chertsey, Surrey. She arrived at the house with nothing but the clothes on her back and the necklace for which she was originally named.

On the surface, the Ashdowns lived a very bland life - Luca Ashdown was an accountant at a local firm, Alice Ashdown a housewife. After the hectic life she’d lived at the orphanage, living with the Ashdowns should have been a welcome break for young Topaz.

Except first impressions are often deceiving. Both Alice and Luca were practitioners of magic - she specialized in making potions and charms, while he was better at the mental side of magic (mostly astral projecting, though he had managed offensive spells in the past). Like most practitioners, they didn’t advertise their involvement in the magical arts, and mostly kept to themselves, save for a few contacts in the British magical community. But it was important to them, and they wanted someone to pass their learnings on to. This was what led to looking into adopting. When the couple had found Topaz, they’d recognized a great magical potential in her, and after a year of searching, they weren’t going to let her get away.

Needless to say, this was all a little shocking for Topaz to try and take in. But she wanted to please her new parents - she put up no argument when the Ashdowns began teaching her magic. It wasn’t until well after she turned ten that she managed to perform her first spell - levitating a cup. The effort exhausted her, however - she was unconscious for almost ten hours afterwards. She got better as time went on, though.

Besides learning magic in her parents’ basement, Topaz led a generally normal life. She attended school, proving that despite her rocky beginnings, she was actually quite smart, and easily able to pick up on what she was being taught. Unfortunately, this and her still-small stature (just as it had in the orphanage) led to her being an easy target for bullies. She’d retained most of the lessons she’d learned in the orphanage, though she quickly learned that attacking a boy with a stick was socially unacceptable, and she’d have to find another way to deal with her problems. So instead of using sticks and weapons, she started using words, dipping into her always-growing vocabulary to insult and confuse the bullies who tried to torture her. In 2007, when she was ten, she skipped a year in school (putting her in the right age group, as she had originally started a year behind due to her educational background).

Manifesting

In 2010, Topaz was thirteen and her life changed yet again. It started, unsurprisingly, with a pair of boys in her class. Topaz had stayed after school and was sitting in the library, trying to finish her homework so that when she got home, she could focus entirely on practicing with Luca and Alice. She’d sat herself in front of the librarian’s desk in hopes that this would stave off anyone who wanted to mess with her. Unfortunately, the librarian left to put some books away, and two boys took this as their chance to have some fun. While one of them distracted Topaz, the other stole her backpack, and they both ran. Topaz, furious, ran after them. The chase ended in a stairwell, with the boys taunting Topaz and daring her to try and get her bag back. Topaz, well aware that there was no way she would be able to fight the boys, began wishing the two would just turn on each other and make her life easier.

Several things happened at once, then - Topaz’s mind was flooded with the vicious, cruel emotions of the two boys in front of her. And at the same time, the bag (which the smaller of the two boys had been swinging over his head, taunting Topaz with it) accidentally slipped from his grip and landed on the other boy’s foot. The bigger boy, suddenly furious, turned on his friend and shoved him into the wall. The second boy shoved back, and before long they were wrestling on the ground. Topaz, stunned by these developments, took this as an opportunity to grab her bag and run before a teacher could find them and somehow connect her to this mess. She ran home in a blur of fright and other emotions that weren’t hers, and by the time she was behind the closed door of the house, she nearly collapsed. She was kept home for the next few days while the Ashdowns tried to figure out what was wrong with her. It was Alice who finally figured out that their daughter was a mutant. While this was entirely new territory for both her and Luca, neither backed down from the challenge of helping Topaz learn to control her empathy, as sending her away would have complicated things too much, and they risked losing their protege.

More Changes

In May 2011, tragedy struck the Ashdowns after Luca accidentally crossed paths with a group of magicians. Walking home late from a night at the pub, he found himself on the wrong side of a mugging when two men cornered him in an alley. Upon realizing that one of the muggers was trying to use magic, Luca performed a spell of his own, creating an energy blast that drained him and fatally injured one of the muggers. Luca made it out of the alley and got a block away before he was forced to call Alice to have her come pick him up.

A few weeks after the incident, Topaz came home from school to find Alice Ashdown on the kitchen floor - dead. The cause of death was eventually ruled “Unknown,” as there were no inward nor outward signs to indicate how she had died. However, a day after her death, a letter was delivered to Luca, reading: “You take one of ours, we take one of yours.” And Luca concluded it had to be connected to the attempted mugging.

Over the summer, he and Topaz moved out of the house, relocating to an apartment building on the edge of town, and Luca quit his job and withdrew Topaz from school, saying he would homeschool her instead. Everyone chalked this up to a grieving man trying to protect the only family he had left, but as always, first impressions on the subject were wrong. Luca was planning to avenge his wife’s death, and he didn’t want any outside interference. Using a few acquaintances he had in the underground magical world, he learned that he was looking for the Destine Clan - a family of magicians. With this information in mind, Luca set about beginning to plan his revenge. Under the alias “Taboo,” he began collecting intel on the Destines, also using Topaz to help him. They spent a year finding everything they could on the family, meticulously planning out the details of the revenge plan.

Phase 1

Revenge

In October 2012, Taboo’s plan was put into action. He and Topaz invaded the Destines home in the dead of night with the plan of killing Adam Destine, the apparent leader. They were caught, and a fight broke out. Taboo and Topaz retreated back to their apartment, where they were later attacked by the Destines in retaliation. Romany Wisdom, upon hearing of the attacks and learning that a teenager was involved, called Amanda Sefton, and an X-Force team was assembled and headed to England to put an end to the conflict. After one fight resulted in the death of Dominic Destine, Taboo and Topaz carried out one final attack on the Destine house. Topaz was knocked out by Adam, and X-Force managed to intervene in this attack. In the chaos, Taboo was apparently killed.

When Topaz regained consciousness, she found herself at Romany’s house. Amanda explained everything that had happened, right up to Taboo’s death, then told Topaz she had two options - stay in England and live and train under Romany, or move to America and attend Xavier’s. Neither option appealed to Topaz, but she found herself wanting to get as far away from England as possible, and decided that Xavier’s would be the least troublesome place to go.

In A New Place

Topaz made her entrance into the mansion as quiet as possible. She mostly kept to herself, wary of the school setting (something she hadn't had to deal with in over a year), though she quickly learned that her fellow New Mutants were very different from the kids she'd gone to school with in England. Even so, she continued to keep her distance, busying herself with homework and magic lessons to keep her mind occupied. After an incident with Tandy's powers in December, Topaz discovered something new about her magic - namely that when she drained someone's emotions when casting a spell, she temporarily renders that person unable to feel anything for a brief amount of time. When Tandy went to Topaz to ask her if she could it again, Topaz happily took the opportunity as a chance to experiment with this new-found aspect of her powers. At the end of the month, she found herself prodded by Amanda into going on the NYE school ski trip - something she did reluctantly and unwillingly.

Right Out Of The Gate

The New Year started in typical Xavier's style when Topaz, along with the other New Mutants, found herself being stalked by otherworldy creatures known as Slendermen. She and fellow student magic user Billy worked together to devise a way to protect the New Mutants from the stalking. It failed, however, when they were dragged into the Askew World. Once there and separated from the other students, Topaz found herself trapped in darkness and taunted by the disembodied voices of Taboo and Adam Destine, telling her she was pathetic and useless. She was eventually rescued by | Matt, and worked with him and Sue to save Hope before all four went to save Renee. They were eventually rescued from the Askew World by X-Force.

Following the incident, Topaz withdrew even further, something that did not go unnoticed. At the same time, Tandy once again approached Topaz in order to have the young witch drain off her emotions so she wouldn't have to deal with them. This continued for some time before Maddie discovered what was happening. After a rather tense "discussion" between Topaz and Maddie, the redhead outed Topaz and Tandy (mostly Topaz, whom Maddie believed should have known better) to David Haller, Adrienne Frost, Professor Xavier, and Amanda. This got Topaz into quite a bit of trouble with the staff and her fellow students, though she and Tandy did manage to forge a friendship through the ordeal. After some amount of stubbornness and a failed bid for independence, she began leaning a bit on Amanda, who was worried about the path the younger witch seemed to be forging for herself. She also - slightly against her will - found herself under a concerned Kurt's watchful eye after a conversation with the teleporter revealed a bit more about her than she meant for the man to find out. As time went on she also struck up quite the friendship with Matt and newcomer Frank Ludlum - both of which were as surprising to her as it might have been to everyone else.

Starting Over

The end of June 2013 brought with it a rather unpleasant surprise in the form of Taboo, back from the dead and supposedly with the intention of reconciling with Topaz. She was understandably suspicious of his motives, but eventually gave in and left the mansion to meet him in the dead of night. Unsurprisingly, this turned out to be the wrong choice, as Taboo was simply trying to lure her away from the protection of the staff in order to trade her for information on the whereabouts of the Destines. It was only the timely arrival of Amanda, Scott Summers, Logan, and Kurt (alerted to Topaz's disappearance by a panicking Tandy) that saved her. The buyers got away, and Taboo was let go to save Topaz from having to go through a trial, but not before being "informed" that if he ever set foot in New York again, he'd be lucky to walk out of the city.

Topaz once more fell back on her own standby of repressing and pretending she wasn't bothered by her father's betrayal, but it backfired quite horribly when the build up of repressed emotions rebounded and burnt out her shields, exposing her to the emotions of every person in the mansion. Unwilling to ask for help, Topaz retreated into the unused wings of the mansion for a couple of days, putting as many walls between herself and everyone else as possible, only coming out when everyone else was asleep. She only managed to get away with this for a couple of days, however, before Scott finally found her and tried to take her to the med lab where someone would be able to keep an eye on her. Being dragged out into the mansion in the middle of the day became the straw that broke the camel's back when they encountered Frank - she snapped, draining off the emotions of every single person within range in an attempt to find some sort of peace, forgetting until it was too late that the emotions she drained would invade her mind. Overwhelmed, her mind shut down. She woke up several hours later, confused and with very little memory of what had happened since the encounter with Taboo, and no answers to the questions waiting for her.

She had a week of downtime in the Box, and was then confronted with the ask of trying to redo the life she'd built for herself in the mansion. Her friendship with Frank suffered due to his anger at her over what had happened, though the other mansion residents were confusingly understanding.

The rest if the summer passed mostly quietly, save for an incident during a field trip with the other New Mutants when a cave came to life and tried to kill the students. At the end of July she joined the other New Mutant girls on a trip to California, and in August she began working with Meggan Szardos, the other empath-type in the mansion, on different ways of using her powers to help her deal with her own emotions.

The year went out with a bang when a horde of demons attacked the mansion. Sue and Topaz were ambushed in their suite, but managed to hold the demons off without too much damamge (to themselves; the suite was another story). Topaz then assisted Dr. Stephen Strange in opening a portal to send a rescue team into faux-Limbo to save them.

Something New

The new year started off just as eventfully - though in a different way - when Frank returned to the mansion after several months, and set out to mend his relationship with Topaz. They made up - and then made out a little before being caught by Sue. Topaz, in typical fashion, tried not to deal with it, but Frank proved to be hard for her to ignore. The conversation was unsurprisingly awkward, but ended with the tentative agreement that they liked each other, and a new - if not somewhat surprising - relationship was born.

Of course things could never stay quiet long where the young magic user was involved. In February it was discovered that Topaz couldn't shield in her sleep (one of the many reasons behind her insomnia) when she accidentally projected during a nightmare, influencing Molly's own dreams and leading her to sleep-fight her way out the window. No physical harm was done to the indestructible girl, it was decided that Topaz would move in with Maddie to avoid further incidents. It also shook Topaz up quite profoundly, though her attempts to withdraw were stymied by well-meaning friends. All and all she managed to deal with everything quite well, making amends with Molly and putting the incident behind her in favor of looking forward.

The new few months passed quietly, until August at least. The beginning of the month saw Topaz joining her teacher and fellow magic users in helping to free Tandy, who had been possessed by a demon. The resulting fight and magical overload blew out her shields and had her back in the Box for a few days. At the end of the month, she joined a trip to District X for an art fair, where a mutant lost control of his powers and brought a bunch of paintings to life. Topaz drained an entire crowd and ended up blowing out her shields once more, resulting in another trip to the Box. Sadly, her relationship with Frank ended after he left the mansion, though they agreed to stay friends.

It's The End Of The World

January 2015 started with the apocalypse - so to speak. The attack on Muir Island saw Topaz losing some key people in her life when Matt and Tabitha were both killed. Following a frightening transformation by Jean Grey, Amanda took a small group of people (including Topaz) to the London Hellfire Club archives to do research, where they encountered demon versions of themselves intent on killing them. The mansion was later attacked by more alternate versions of the residents, and Topaz joined Sue, Meggan, and Hope in trying to defend it - killing alternate versions of Sue and Hope in the process. She was caught in the crossfire when the Dark Phoenix appeared and leveled the mansion - she survived, but ended up with a concussion, destroying her shields for the third time in six months in the process.

After the destructive battle, Xorn appeared to the survivors of the battle, informing them that their old world was loss nad he was moving them to a new world, pieced together from other bits of destroyed worlds.

Phase 2

Brave New World

Topaz woke up on the mansion lawn with the powers hangover from hell and, upon discovering she'd lost more of her friends (Sue, Clint, Tandy, Billy, and Molly), she retreated to her room, hiding once more from the world. In the following days she and Hope would turn to wine to help them drown their feelings, stealing it where they could find it - and in one baffling moment, finding wine left for them by their "fairy wine mothers."

The universe continued to kick her in the teeth, however, as one by one new versions of the people she'd known in the old universe appeared - including a young Jean Grey, an older Matt Murdock, and a teenage Tabitha Smith. She continued drinking with Hope to try as a way of coping until Adrienne Frost discovered their secret. Rather than turn them in, however, she made them both promise to talk to Rogue about their issues, and continued to discreetly supply them with alcohol, so long as they agreed to only drink in her old suite and not leave until they were sober again. Therapy and only drinking in one place was a fair trade off for Topaz.

The downward spiral continued on until July, with Topaz having various bad interactions and withdrawing further and further into herself. Things came to a boil in May when Hope returned from a trip and found Topaz thoroughly drunk in their suite, leading to a fight (which Topaz regretted when she was sober again). Finally in July she took her chance to escape in typical Topaz style, leaving notes for people who might worry instead of facing anyone and saying goodbye. Amanda tracked her down to an airport in India and made her promise weekly check ins so her mentor would know she was okay. Kurt called her later and extracted the same promise from Topaz.

Same Trouble Different World

It seemed Topaz's penchant for getting into trouble followed her from one world to the next, however. She spent most of her time in India trying to hunt down leads to find her birth parents. She managed to make it to October before everything went to hell on her. It started with finding a fanatical church, led by Aadesh Saini (whom she suspected was her biological father) which claimed its mission was to "purify the world." At the same time she discovered local girls were disappearing from the area, and she suspected the church might have had something to do with. She called Amanda for help (good) but ignored Amanda and went back to the church and continued investigating on her own (bad).

Saini, unfortunately, realized what she was doing and with the help of his congregation he locked her up with four other girls whom they suspected were witches. Topaz managed to break out, only to promptly be captured again and tied to a stake, nearly burned alive. It was only Amanda's and X-Force's time arrival that saved her. Afterwards Topaz finally came clean to Amanda about why she was really in India, including her suspicions about Saini being her birth father. She also said she was finally ready to return to Xavier's - time away and time to heal had given her a better chance to cope with all the strangeness at the mansion.

She came back to a very different mansion, meeting several new students (including Amanda's new magical brood) and re-bonding with the friends she'd left behind. She managed to make it through the rest of the year without any incidents, much to her relief, and quietly rang in the new year with a glass of wine and a toast to all the friends she'd lost.

Responsible Adult?

The year started out with, no surprise, trouble, when Topaz and Meggan found themselves being targeted by a a parasite that formed on the astral plane during Xorn's rebuilding of the universe. The mansion telepaths and Hope were dragged into Topaz's and Meggan's minds, and David Haller, Jean Grey, and Rachel Kinross-Dayspring were subjected to the fun horrors of Topaz's mind. They managed to break through into Meggan's

mind and they all destroyed the parasite and were released from the girls' minds. Topaz spent most of the next day in bed nursing a killer headache, and Amanda decided it was time for Topaz to have company in her suite. She bought her a small black kitten, whom Topaz named Midnight.

It wasn't all getting into trouble, though. Topaz found herself grudgingly bonding with fellow librarian dweller Jean-Paul Beaubier, she and Meggan formed a friendship over their parasite experience, and somehow becoming a trusted adult with a few of the mistrusting teenagers. When several teenagers were kidnapped into Askew World, Topaz was the one Clea called for help but following the rest of the kids into Askew World to rescue them. With Amanda and her team gone on vacation, Topaz, Megan, and Billy went to the X-Men for help, and they all rescued the kids together.

In March, she somehow ended up on a team of people organized by Clint to go to Alaska and investigate some strange events for a SHIELD friend. They discovered a man named Paul Norbert Ebersol was using Nano technology to control people, and in the course of his investigation he captured Clint and Kyle, leaving Topaz, Molly, and Natasha to rescue them. Somehow in the fight, Topaz found herself against Norbert, and accidentally killed him. The trauma did a number on her, and led to her shutting down for several weeks, not answering text messages or emails and resolutely ignoring Amanda and Jean-Paul when they planted themselves on her couch/

Amazingly, Topaz managed to find some quiet time. She began applying to schools for the fall, and got into New York University. She started taking sign language classes with Artie so she could communicate better with Maya Lincoln-Lopez. In May, Amanda decided to drag Topaz along on a road trip to see Maya's grandfather about her possession problem, and somehow it fell on Topaz to take responsibility for Maya.

Her quiet life, unfortunately, was interrupted when Clint, Kyle, Everett Thomas, and Matt brought what turned out to be a cursed staff into her library. Upon touching the staff, Clint and Matt went berserk with rage, leaving Kyle, Everett, and Topaz to fight them off. The humans survived, but quite a few books were destroyed. Topaz was incredibly displeased.

Changes

As always, there was no rest for the wicked. 2017 started with a bang when a magical mishap shrunk the entire magic class, and they spent an entire night trying to fix themselves. Almost immediately after, Topaz ended up on a team of semi-magical experts deployed to look into a magical portal that had turned the Avengers evil. That mission went to hell when a SWORD agent released an ice giant, forcing the group into a fight they were ill-prepared for. Topaz and Amanda both quickly ran out of magical energy, and Amanda offered herself as a power source to Topaz. That led to Topaz learning a few things about her teacher that Amanda would have rather kept secret, and gave Topaz a lot to think about.

In May, Topaz was stunned to discover that Clint had been serious about her joining the new team he was forming, despite spending several months helping Kyle recruit people for it. She took Clint's offer though, and become one of the first people to join the new team.

The Winding Way and Dark Dimension

March and April brought with it more mysteries, as the mansion magic contingency found themselves in possession of some odd rocks. Amanda eventually figured out they were calling cards of the Winding Way. Almost immediately after, the Way decided to "test" Clea and Stephen, by giving them a magical card game to see how they would deal with it. The cards brought real giant spiders into the mansion, resulting in a lot of property damage and the library being destroyed again. While Amanda and Topaz found no actual proof of the Way's involvement, all signs pointed to them, and Topaz was incredibly unamused.

She managed to survive the summer without too many disasters, a new record for her, but October brought with it a whole new set of problems. Clea started having strange dreams, and was attacked in the mansion library. Topaz found her bleeding and brought her down to the med lab, where she admitted to having the dreams, and Topaz agreed to stay with her for the night to watch over her so she could sleep. Of course, she paid for that when a portal opened in the room and dragged them both to another dimension. They spent the next twenty-four hours dodging a murderous demon and trying to survive until the cavalry could save them, and even then needed help fromThe Ancient One and his group of tossers. In the midst of the fight, Topaz accidentally tapped into a side of her mutation she didn't know existed - low-level telepathy.

Thankfully, the rest of the year went quietly, and without any more damage to Topaz or her library.

A Rocky Year

“Quiet” lasted until the beginning of February, when The Destines cornered Topaz on campus and kidnapped her, delivering her to Taboo, who in turn blackmailed her with Stephen and Clea in order to secure her help in bringing Alice back to life. Topaz was appalled by the idea, but also backed into another corner by the threat against her kids, and decided to go along with it, knowing London would alert Amanda the moment Taboo started the spell.

The alert came a moment too late, though. Taboo had managed to kill Albert Destine before Amanda, Wanda Maximoff, and Billy Kaplan got there. The Destines broke free of their bindings and immediately attacked, and somewhere in the midst of the fight, Taboo’s spell half-worked, bringing back a zombie. Topaz, against Taboo’s protests, put the zombie out of its misery once more, and told Taboo in no uncertain terms that if he came near her or her kids again, she would kill him.

In the aftermath, Topaz was left shaken and hurting. She had been used by the Destines in order to get more power from the Way, she had been blackmailed and used by Taboo to bring Alice back, and she hadn’t even been able to stop Taboo from putting her mother through all that horror. What followed was a slight mental break, in which she informed Amanda that she saw herself as a burden and useless, and she refused to be swayed. This was the beginning of the rift between the two of them as Topaz closed herself off from the world once more, leaving all of her friends on the outside unsure of what to do.

She continued trying to erode her relationship not only with Amanda, but also with Kurt, acting anywhere from indifferent to outright hostile toward them when opportunities presented themselves. At the same time, she held her friends at arm's length, refusing to answer any questions about what happened in February or pertaining to her current mental well-being. She found out at the beginning of March that she was on academic probation and failing three classes, which led to her spending her birthday on a bender, unknowingly followed by the Sefton siblings, who kept her out of trouble and made sure she found her way safely to bed when she came home asleep in the back of an Uber.

The year continued to be a downhill slide. In April, Topaz was unwillingly pulled along on a mission to the Bermuda Triangle, where Scott’s father had disappeared, and turned into a mermaid to go to the bottom of the ocean, where a mind-controlled Jean delve into her head and found out some of her darker secrets - namely her suicidal ideations, and her feelings about the current situation she had created between herself and Sefton siblings. In the aftermath, she secured Jean’s promise not to tell anyone else what she had seen, but she still didn’t like it. The end of the month got worse when Illyana Rasputin had a teleportation accident that dragged herself, Topaz, and several others into Limbo. They spent three days there, navigating the dangerous land and trying to stay alive. The adventure ended with a monster called Carnage, and Topaz made the impromptu decision to drain Gabriel Cohuelo’s emotions for magic. Amanda confronted her about it when she was home, and Topaz promptly blew her off, much to Amanda’s dismay. Finding out in May that she had officially failed two classes and would remain on academic probation into the next school year did little to brighten her spirits.

Everything went to hell (in a less literal sense) in July 2018, when people began randomly coming down with various ailments. It was Topaz who discovered they were being cursed when Tandy’s powers went out of control, and she felt a glimmer of magic accompanying it. Two weeks passed with more people going into the med lab progressively worse, and it culminated with Amanda being attacked when she was called to London. Not long after the attack, Topaz received a text message from Amanda’s cell-phone - it was Adam Destine, informing her that more people around her would be hurt if she didn’t turn herself over to him. There was zero hesitation, as Topaz was of the firm belief that her one life was worth less than everyone else in the mansion.

What followed was two days of intense mental torture, including the manifestation of Topaz’ worst fears (such as Amanda giving up on her and calling her a failure) to horrific hallucinations. The Destines messed with her head in every single way, until she couldn’t tell reality from dream. That made it pretty hard for the rescue group to get her out, and when they finally got her back to the mansion, the doctors had to sedate her.

She woke up, convinced she was hallucinating when she saw Jean and begging the Destines to stop. Jean managed to calm her down and somewhat convince her that nothing was a hallucination, and that she was safe. In the aftermath, she and Amanda took tentative steps toward reconciliation, with Topaz, severely shaken out of her head and having a hideous moment of hindsight, breaking down apologizing to Amanda.

Moving Forward

The following months were hard. Topaz did her best to draw the line between ignoring her problems and isolating herself, and was forced into therapy with Gus Grim by Marie-Ange via Doug (something about Topaz turning into Voldemort's nonexistent daughter), as well as Skype sessions two times a week with Xavier. The introduction of two new people, who had no idea Topaz was mental, was a welcome relief. She met Alani Ryan in the library, and ended up recruiting an assistant librarian, and also met Betsy Braddock upon her arrival, giving her the introverted shortened version of the mansion tour.

Of course, 2018 couldn't end without one less insane occurrence, this time in the form of a Danger Room mishap, which sent Topaz and a group of mansionites into the fictional town of Night Vale. Really, it could have been worse, given how the year started.

2019 didn't hold much better prospects. She ended up pulled into a magical mishap with Clint and co. This led to the discovery of what Topaz termed "Satan's Storage Room", and the accidental release of an ancient, dangerous sorcerer. Just a typical February. Somewhere in between everything, Topaz attempted to address getting back into school, taking the steps to get her last, disastrous semester taken off her record due to "serious family issues," and hopefully returning to school in the fall.

The continuous threat of Adam Destine hanging over her head finally ended in September, when Adam made a deal with a demon to steal Topaz' soul and use her body to get into the mansion. It backfired, thanks to some past-future intervention by Amanda and Marie-Ange, and the demon killed Adam for not following through on his end of the deal. It was a relief, if not somewhat bittersweet for Amanda, which Topaz carried the guilt for (even if she'd never admit it). She somehow managed to get through the rest of the year without incident - something she found herself rather unsatisfied with.

Making Choices

2020 was a year of change for Topaz, as she finally started making choices and pushing ahead with things she wanted to do. Kyle's decision to re-join the X-Men drove her to speak with first Amanda, and then Marie-Ange, about joining X-Force. She refocused on school, declaring a double major in psychology and library science, and getting her life in some kind of order. Other than an incident with a magical library, things actually went pretty well for awhile...

Time Stand Still and other Dimensional Shenanigans

And then an evil doppleganger showed up and tried to kidnap Topaz while she was away on a therapy-mandated retreat. The encounter was later explained by a group of young dimension hoppers - they had come from another universe chasing the evil version of Topaz, who had gone way down the Dark path of the Winding Way to gather power and go back in time; she wanted to stop the Destines from killing her mother and starting this whole mess in the first place. Topaz was a little shaken to discover any version of her was capable of going that far for selfish reasons, but it also reinforced the fact that she needed her friends and people around her to keep her on the right track.

Three months later, she was pulled into a bubble dimension created by a psychic vampire intending to drain their life force for herself. The weird dimension found Topaz working with the Hellfire Club, casually making choices that go against every moral she actually had (chief among them being offering to sell Clea to Doug and killing Artie). The reality abruptly fell apart when Jean and Emma killed the psychic vampire, which resulted in the cracks in the universe fusing together, safely allowing the survivors of the former universe to talk about the real reason behind M-Day and everything that had happened. Topaz decided she didn't want to talk about it, and was just thankful that it meant she wouldn't have to deal with any more weird dimension stuff.

Stepping Up

2021 saw Topaz becoming slightly more confident in herself, taking the lead in things like helping to create a fake book for a heist, and taking a more active role in investigating an angry magical spirit in Baltimore. She also found herself clashing with Amanda, saying she was still trying to protect her when she didn't need it, which led to her working harder to try and prove herself.

She lost about half of November after a cursed book blew up in Avalon, destabilizing the pocket dimension, and she fell into the void while helping others escape. She found her way home with a little help from her friends, surprised to find that no one was mad at her for her choices. It also boosted her confidence a bit, though. So not everything was terrible.

Work continued to be busy through 2022 and 2023, until Topaz realized there was a problem with her contact network in London, and decided to go there herself to take care of it.

Physical Characteristics

Height: 5'3"

Weight: 110 lbs.

Eyes: Dark Brown

Hair: Black

Other Features: Burn scars on her feet from nearly being burned alive

Powers

Mutation

Topaz is a an empath/telepath hybrid. Her primary skill is empathy - she can gauge how a person is feeling, as well as manipulate those emotions and intensify them.

The telepathy is very secondary, and didn't actually develop until about seven years after her initial manifestation - the only thoughts Topaz can hear are ones that are accompanied with particularly powerful emotions, giving her the ability to interpret why a person feels the way he or she feels. But she can’t just read a person’s mind and know his or her every thought.

She can almost always sense a dull buzz of emotions from the people around her, but over time she’s learned to tune that out.

Magic

Pre-mutation, Topaz drew on her own life energy in order to perform spells. After her mutation developed, the Ashdowns changed direction a bit, deciding to find a way for Topaz to use emotions to fuel her spells instead. They started with using her own, generally suppressed emotions, which was a success. She also learned how to allow others' emotions to amplify her own, therefore making her magic stronger.

Topaz's magic is limited by how much energy she can draw off her own emotions and the availability of the emotions of people around her. How strong the spell is depends on how strong the emotions are — in a high-stress situation like a riot, for example, when there are a lot of people around panicking and/or feeling angry, she's more powerful than she would be if she was just sitting in a room with a bunch of very calm people.

The type of spells Topaz can use focus largely on the mental plane. With the development of her mutation, she began to drift away from her foster parents' original teachings, forging her own magical path. Her range of spells is mostly defensive - shielding and light spells, though she has found ways to make the lights offensive, turning them into pseudo-energy blasts.

When Topaz draws energy off of other people's emotions, it renders them temporarily apathetic (usually lasting anywhere from five minutes to half an hour, depending on the strength of the emotions). In turn, she takes the emotions on herself, making for a very crowded emotional plane at times. Again, depending on how strong the emotions are (and how many people she drew off of), this can last for minutes or for hours. This effect is negated when she draws energy off her own emotions, though due to the limited power source (she can only get so much energy from herself) the spells aren't nearly as strong.

Equipment

A journal given to her by Kurt for her sixteenth birthday. She writes in it in Hindi so no one else can read it. She got her second journal from Rogue during a therapy session a couple years later, and has continued writing in it daily as another (much healthier) way of coping with things.

Trivia

Always wears her topaz pendant.

Fluent in Hindi, Spanish, ASL, French, and Latin.

Despite being quiet and extremely introverted, Topaz has an incredibly dry sense of humor and can be downright sarcastic sometimes. The only people who see this usually are the ones she's closest to.

She has a penchant for bringing things to life with magic: the list so far includes chess pieces, stuffed animals for Wade Wilson, cat nip mice for her cat, army men during a magic class, and a handful of helper toys around the library. Over time, she's learned how to bind the things to a certain place or person so they can't run amok.

As a way of dealing with the trauma of losing most of her friends when the world ended, Topaz tends to refer to the "new" versions of said friends by their last names, code names, titles, or not at all if she can absolutely help it. It's a weird tick, but it helps.