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Lena Elizabeth Cavanaugh
FACE CLAIM: Sharna Burgess

♦ THE BASICS ♦

AGE: 34
GENDER: Female
ORIENTATION: Pansexual
POSITION: Dancer

♦ THE ABILITY ♦

POWER: Power Mimicry/Sensing
Her constant training has provided her with the ability to mimic an ability from sensing where it is coming from and to control how long she uses it. She is also able to detect what the limitations are. This also grants her a basic understanding over what powers she mimics. She can't outright sense them, but over the years, she has learned to tell them apart by learning how the different powers 'feel', though, this does not mean she knows what every single power is, just the ones she's familiar with. She is also capable of copying two abilities if the mutant has it and if they are similar to each other

LIMITATIONS:
She can only reach out to ten feet at any given time
The abilities she mimics will be that of the mutant's limitations. If she copies off someone who has no training, the ability will be erratic in her hand. The opposite goes for when she mimics an experienced and trained mutant, her grasp on the ability will mimic that
It lasts for a maximum of one hour or until she mimics another power [whichever comes first]
She is only capable of copying one mutant's ability at any given time. Once she has copied off mutant A, she won't be able to copy from mutant A again. She is still able to copy off mutant A's ability but she will have to find a different mutant.

SIDE-EFFECTS:
If the power she mimics is active for the whole hour, her body will automatically shut down for hours, sometimes days. She will need the time to recuperate by sleeping
Whatever side effects the mutant mimicked has, she will suffer the same. If a cryokinetic gets dehydrated after two minutes of using their abilities, she will get dehydrated after two minutes of using their abilities
Mental based abilities especially have a stronger effect on her

♦ THE FREEFORM ♦

I got this feeling inside my bones
It goes electric, wavy when I turn it on

I grew up in a rather stifling environment where individuality wasn't celebrated. My mother was a heart surgeon and my father owned an accounting firm. Both my elder brothers were groomed from a very young age to follow either my mother or my father's footsteps while I always had the urge to sing and dance. I loved my parents. They did their best to raise me and I will be forever grateful for their presence in my adolescence but doing what I wanted to do in secret was a shitty way to go through my childhood.

So while my brothers were given assessment books and actually enjoyed watching educational programs, I was in my room, listening to the mix tapes of songs I recorded off the radio. Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls, ABBA, Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson were idols of mine. Their songs made me move and jump about. My body seemed to react every time their songs started playing.

I didn't do bad in school but there was just nothing that held my interest long enough for me to sit still and absorb. What I looked forward to was dance classes every Wednesday before break. Most of my classmates didn't quite enjoy being forced to move but I excelled. Several years of doing well made me pursue it seriously but at nine years old, telling your boring serious as fuck parents that you wanted ballet and gymnastics lessons was like force feeding them medicine. They don't wanna and I couldn't make them.

I can't take my eyes up off it, moving so phenomenally
Room on lock the way we rock it, so don't stop

Little me somehow persevered and started doing odd jobs around the house for payment and then started expanding to my neighbours. It took me awhile to come up with enough to pay for the lessons because they did not come cheap at all. I even started to bring lunch from home just so I didn't have to use up my allowance. I'm still quite proud of nine year old me for having discipline that I no longer have now.

Telling little white lies to cover up for when I disappear every time there was a lesson, I managed to actually fool my parents into thinking I was studying at the library or at the beach with friends or having extra lessons to catch up on studies. I honestly have no idea how I managed to survive running around doing so much in so little time.

Ooh, it's something magical
It's in the air, it's in my blood, it's rushing on

When I hit puberty at eleven, I honestly thought that I was dying from exhaustion. Until now, the memory of me crying to my mum and spilling everything to her makes me laugh my arse off. It was surprisingly a bonding moment for her and me. She told me what was going on, reprimanded me for lying to her but in the end I actually found an ally in her. She finally understood how much dancing meant to me and she began to take interest and finally funding my passion. At least for two weeks. I started getting dizzy spells and tingling all over my body whenever I came in contact with some people. I chalked it up to my period being a bitch but then these two suits came to my house, spoke to my parents and then told me that I had to go to Darwin for school. I swear, I thought crying because I was going to die when I had my period was bad enough. But nope, leaving dance and everyone I knew to go to school because I was apparently a freak got me much worst.

I can say this though, the move was a good one. I could let my freak flag fly on demand and nobody actually gave a rat's arse about it. They had dance and gymnastics and to top it all off, everything was free. Our classes weren't constrained in buildings and most of our lessons were also an exercise in movement. I thrived and I was in my element. I found lifelong friends, I met people who opened my eyes and legs to opportunities I didn't think I could have achieved if I stayed where I was. Yes, the commute was a killer and I couldn't always go home but I'd found home at the Academy as well.

Don't need no reason, don't need control
I fly so high, no ceiling, when I'm in my zone

I graduated both from education and my training at seventeen and when I went home, everything felt so small. Although my parents were quite accepting of my status as a mutant, they handled me like I was made of glass. I felt suffocated still and I decided to leave. Mum was hesitant to let me go again but she understood. We had a heart to heart talk the night before I was set to leave and she told me she should have made sure I was happy from the beginning. I told her she did everything right. I cried even worst than when I found out I was a mutant.

I took a gap year where I just traveled everywhere. I worked such odd jobs to pay my way through every country but I gained so much experience and appreciated cultures I didn't even know existed until I realised I needed a place to settle because a year became three. I was in London when the realisation hit me. Of course, meeting a woman who pretty much hit all the right spots physically and mentally helped plenty. She was a little older than I was with a steady job and plans of building a family. I was still so young and wanted so much more out of life but she somehow convinced me that what she wanted was what I wanted as well. So I settled. For five years, I stayed in the UK. I became a dance instructor the first year and I got noticed by a talent scout who then convinced me to compete in championships. I won several of them and got picked up by a choreographer who added me into his troupe.

My girl wasn't too big a fan of sharing me and we hit a rough patch. After awhile, we decided to part ways and I tried to distract myself with the tours we ended up on. For the next five years, our troupe thrived. We toured everywhere in the UK and the US. We were in California when news hit about mutants. I'd managed to not ever bring it up that I was one but my troupe did not have the friendliest stance on mutants, I found out so I left. I contacted several friends from the Academy who told me that there was a safe haven for mutants in Oregon and at first I wasn't entirely certain if I should make my way there. But I couldn't stay, I knew that.

'Cause I got that sunshine in my pocket
Got that good soul in my feet

For the next four years, life finally stopped throwing me curve balls. I was back to being a dance instructor. It wasn't my dream job but the people I taught love it. I can see them all enjoying what I teach them and eventually, I grew to love it. It pays the bills to my modest two bedroom apartment and it feeds my Persian, Leo and two Lhasa Apsos, Jude and Johnny. And of course, the added bonus of having a good time is completely priceless.

I'm settling down again, I realise this. But I feel good about it.

♦ THE PLAYER ♦

USERNAME: Queen Heaux Nu
AGE GROUP: Late twenties
EXPERIENCE: Too long
WHERE DID YOU FIND US? In the Great Void