User Profile

Name: Christine Singleton
Codename: The Piper
Age: 17
Birthday: 3/10/81
Face: Jewel Staite (actress)
AIM: Brindlewourth
Powers: Christine can communicate with animals, though for now the ability is only akin to empathy...she can receive and project emotions, and in doing so, influence an animal's behavior.

What are the drawbacks of the power? Her powers are limited to mammals (no insects, fish, non-vertebrates), and she can only communicate with animals within 15' of her. She also has problems with extremes of emotion, meaning that a nearby animal's emotions can affect her own moods, or if her emotions are strong enough (such as when she's in a phobic state), her range is as wide as the Mod deems fit.

Personality: Since her accident, Christine has become a bit more outgoing and friendly than usual, perhaps because she -can't- watch the social dynamics of a group before deciding whether or not she wants to be a part of it. She's trying not to let her pride get in the way of her education, both with her abilities and getting along in her new darkness. While she can indeed "see" through her dog's eyes, she hasn't done it often, and doesn't tell people that she can do it at all. She is easily startled by touch or sound if she's not expecting it, but it's not something that freaks her out.

Positive personality traits: Loyalty to anyone who has shown her kindness and don't pity her, a wicked sense of humor, a gentle nature with both people and animals.

Negative personality traits: She has a tendency to "see" things in black and white, as a lot of non-verbal subtlety is lost on her, and it can make her very short with people. Also, when her emotions get the better of her, she is more prone to lash out physically than emotionally. Her longing for a social 'pack' makes her vulnerable to anyone offering friendship.


HISTORY:

Christine grew up with her parents as distant figures of authority, as is often the case when having a child is considered part of the life script of rich, successful people. Expensive daycare, preschool, and private school provided her the proper care and enrichment a growing girl needed, but everything always seemed so superficial, even in her young eyes, and all the hired clowns at her friends' birthday parties couldn't hide it.

There was an incident when she was barely four that she became a celebrity, but not in the way that anyone would wish on a sweet little girl. She was at a play-date picnic, wandering at the park one day when the earth gave way beneath her...a sinkhole, they said, and the TV news covered it for two days as workers strove to rescue the girl trapped in half a broken drainpipe. She was rescued, and MommyDaddy came closer, almost into focus for a time. But as the spotlight faded there was work, and soon everything became as before, save for the subconscious effects of Christine's ordeal. No more would she play hide and seek, crawling into small spaces to escape detection, or even make a blanket-fort to defend against imaginary invaders. The darkness and small space had cold and teeth and blinding light and she feared that more than anything.

The summers in Litchfield, however, were where she found something that brought everything into focus for her. Grandpa Joe (her father's father) loved hosting her for the summers, and taught her the give and take of the world. He showed her the rewards of hard work, of the smell of clean hay after she mucked out a stall, the shine of "her" horse's coat after she had curried her after a ride, and the happy exhaustion of a day well spent. He would take her for trail rides in the woods, show her the tracks of the deer and fox and the occasional bear that would come through the forests. He showed her more than any science teacher that nature and its creatures survived no matter what. He would give her little assignments through e-mails, to find a specific species of bird in Central Park, or to collect five different species of autumn leaves to show him at Christmas time.

School was all right...she did well enough grade-wise so her parents didn't complain or seek counseling for her, though they were concerned that she wasn't making any friends. What they didn't understand is that she didn't want the sort of friends that were at her school, the ones who put on airs of being so happy but threw up in the bathroom to make themselves feel beautiful, the ones who equated wealth with social standing when in reality their money was what kept them from the consequences of the nasty things they did. They settled for enrolling her at a riding stable when she was 13 years old, seeing as she liked Grandpa Joe's horses, and even got Joe to send Feather, her favorite mare, to be boarded there.

The other girls there, who had been riding at the stable barely before they could walk, looked down their nose at the new girl, who mucked out her own stall and rode for the pleasure of it instead of training for competition. This hurt her a bit; she'd thought that other horse people would have been more friendly, but as Christine's fledgling abilities started to manifest she soon had other things to think about.

She didn't really notice them at first...a feeling of satisfaction as the farm collie gnawed on his bone, the smile she would get watching the horses frisk about in the paddock in the morning, the way that her Feather would calm down if she whispered to her and thought of apples, or the way that the hairs on the back of her neck stood up when the barn cat stalked the mice in the stalls. She didn't think anything of it, until she felt affected by emotions without any particular reason....until she started to pay attention to it. An obstinate horse who refused to take a jump brought a rush of anger, a barn cat streaking by with the collie after it brought a shock of fear. A bright girl, she tried a few experiments, and found that she could indeed half-communicate with the various animals at the farm through emotions, and could influence their behavior when she concentrated hard enough on an emotion. She stopped as soon as she found out that she could do it. No, normal girls don't do that, especially not when the kids at the stable had started to smile at her, invite her to eat lunch with them. Not when the golden-haired boy that she watched from the fence when he rode had started to talk to her.

It happened so fast and unexpected she never saw it coming, so glad was she that she was making friends, -real- friends...until they told her that she had to pass a test to join their riding club. She didn't have a chance to ask what it was when she found herself grabbed and pushed kicking and screaming into one of the bins where riders kept their tack. The darkness swelled and engulfed her, and she screamed with her voice and her mind...until suddenly the weight was gone from the tackbin and she shoved her way out to a nightmare.

Horses and riders alike were screaming, some in fear, some in pain, and she didn't know what was going on. She heard the clatter of hooves on the concrete aisle, and turned just in time to see one of the horses rear up, and his striking forehoof caught her on the back of the head, sending her into darkness.

She woke up in the hospital, a cool cloth being pressed to her head, and she couldn't see. Nobody would tell her what happened, and while she knew her mother wielded the cloth, she couldn't hear her father nearby. Someone turned on the television, and she found that she'd become a celebrity again. The reporter stated that three horses at the riding stable had battered themselves to death due to an unknown panic, and three more horses had to be euthanized due to their injuries received in the struggle to escape a perfectly calm barn. Only one injury, Christine Singleton, who was blinded by her injuries when a horse trampled her during the fray. She listened to the people who called themselves her friend speak through their tears that they were just playing around when the horses went crazy, that Christine had always been kind of weird around them and...it didn't matter what they said anymore, she knew what happened, that her fear had done this. More than her fear, it was her -abilities- that had done this, and she knew that this spotlight wouldn't fade. Mutant. Freak. Abomination. Her mother still wouldn't say anything.

There was enough money to hush this up, for her parents to fade into the background once more. There was a school for people like her, that would put her out of the picture until she was eighteen, and then they could forget the whole thing ever happened. Grandpa Joe didn't forget - he even forgave her for what happened to Feather, and made sure that she didn't hole herself up and never go outside again. He paid for a guide dog, a German Shepherd named Cade, and told her that she had to get back up and go back out into the world. It was hard at first; Christine didn't want to go near -any- animal after what happened at the stable, but when she first touched Cade's head, and felt the love pouring from him to her, she cried into his coat as she felt as if she were truly forgiven. She picked up his harness an hour later, ready to take her grandfather's advice.

It was during their guide dog training, as the pair of them bonded more closely through work and need, that something surprising happened...she found that, if she focused enough, she could see through Cade's eyes. While she delighted to find that she could see again, albeit strangely and far closer to the ground than she was used to, she knew that she had to find out more of what she could do before her more extreme emotions affected Cade as well.

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