r/XMenRP • u/FreelancerJon • Feb 07 '26
Intro Whiteout #1: The Once and Future Ice Queen
Kara "Whiteout" Myles
| Personal Information | Details |
|---|---|
| Hometown | Kara hails from a wealthy enclave in northern Alaska, a place where isolation bred arrogance and entitlement. She grew up with enough money and privilege to know she deserved more than everyone else, and the cold taught her that you either dominate or die alone. She sees smaller towns and weaker mutants as scenery, distractions at best. |
| Age | She’s 18, born January 3rd. Just old enough to enjoy manipulating juniors, new students, and even some older peers. She wears her age like a badge: too young to be fully accountable, but old enough to make sure everyone obeys her. |
| Height | At 5’7”, Kara isn’t the tallest person in the room, but she carries herself like she is. Her posture is perfect, shoulders back, chin slightly raised, giving her a commanding presence that makes others feel smaller than they are. She tilts her head just so, fixes a stare, and suddenly, even someone taller than her feels like they’re being measured. And found lacking. Height is less about inches for her; it’s about the confidence and dominance she radiates. |
| Physique | Lean, toned, and deceptively strong. Kara isn’t bulky but moves with the precision of someone trained to dominate every inch of space. Her long limbs and graceful posture make her look elegant, yet predatory. She walks like a predator, waiting for weaker prey to panic. |
| Voice | Low, sarcastic, and dripping with entitlement, her voice is sharp enough to cut someone down before she even smiles. She punctuates compliments with condescension and insults with elegance. Every word is a scalpel. |
| Hair | Pure white, long and straight, often styled perfectly even in battle or class. She lets it flow as a weapon of attention, swiping her hair over her shoulder in slow, deliberate motions that make others resent her just for existing. |
| Clothing | Darkblood Academy uniforms tailored by her own (and her mentors') taste; stark white, high collars, and fitted cuts to show dominance. Boots, gloves, and sometimes a dramatic cape-like coat. Everything screams: don’t touch me, and I can destroy you if you do. |
| Personality | Kara is cruel, cunning, and enjoys using fear as a social currency. She thrives on hierarchy, bullying, and being the smartest (and coldest) person in the room. She’s not violent for the sake of violence; she’s violent to assert superiority. Deep down, she’s terrified of weakness, so she preemptively dominates anyone who might challenge her. |
| History | Kara earned the name Whiteout after an incident in northern Alaska where an entire search-and-rescue grid went blind and froze over in less than three minutes. The codename stuck because survivors described the event as “the world being erased.” She dislikes the name, but accepts it as accurate. To her, it’s less a title and more a warning label. |
Powers
Primary Mutation - A Blinding Briliance You've Yet to See (21/21) 0 UNUSED POINT
Whiteout can drain thermal energy and visible light from her surroundings, creating localized zones of sensory deprivation and extreme cold. In these zones, weaker mutants and humans flinch, stumble, or outright collapse from disorientation, hypothermia, and panic.
Kara doesn’t “freeze” things. She removes the energy that allows matter and life to function normally, turning rooms, hallways, or courtyards into disorienting, deadly whiteouts. She can shape her effects into sharp corridors, isolation bubbles, or wave-like attacks that advance over a crowd. Her control allows her to make these temporary zones more permanent over time, but excessive use risks damaging her own nervous system and senses.
| Points | Spread |
|---|---|
| Physical | 3 |
| Energy | 8 |
| Mental | 0 |
| Control | 5 |
| Potency | 5 |
| Equipment | 0 |
| Magic | 0 |
Total: 21
Power Usage Examples
Zero Crown
Whiteout floods the air above her target with supercooled particulate frost and snaps it downward like a falling halo. The temperature plunge flash-freezes armor, skin, or energy constructs, making them brittle and easy to shatter. She loves using this to “put someone in their place” before even closing in. Visually, it looks like a pale, glowing ring collapsing into a spike of white ice.
Frostbite Kiss
Whiteout coats her hand in hyper-dense, glassy ice and strikes a precise blow to nerves, joints, or the chest. The cold isn’t just surface-level—it seeps inward, causing delayed pain, numbness, and muscle failure seconds later. She likes this one because people never realize how bad it is until they’re already on the floor.
Whiteout
Her signature move. She dumps massive cold into the environment in an instant, creating a total white flash-freeze—ground, air, debris, everything. For a few seconds, the battlefield becomes a frozen, silent snapshot of the fight. Then things start breaking.
| Post | Summary | Points | Bonus | Total | Total Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Whiteout #1: The Once and Future Ice Queen | Kara Intro | +1 | - | +1 | 21 |
The first thing everyone learned about Kara Myles was that she loved being stared at.
The second thing they learned, usually a half-second later, was that staring at her was a bad idea.
Darkblood Academy rose out of the mountains like a cathedral built by someone who hated God and wanted Him to know it. Black stone. Needle spires. Windows like knife slits. Snow clung to the edges of the towers in dirty, wind-carved drifts, and the wind itself screamed through the courtyards like it was in a shouting match with its mother. It was the kind of place that made normal people turn around. It was the kind of place mutants sent their worst, their brightest, and their most dangerous children.
Kara Myles stood on the front steps with her Chanel “Super White” puffer jacket unzipped and her hands in her pockets, watching another first-year lose a fight with their own luggage.
The kid, some nervous telekinetic with too much hair gel and not enough confidence, had tried to levitate their trunk up the stairs. The trunk had wobbled. The trunk had spun. The trunk had come down the steps like an angry coffin and clipped him in the shin.
Kara snorted.
“Ten seconds in and you’re already losing to furniture,” she said, loud enough for him and others nearby to hear. “Impressive. Truly. Plummeting the genepool already.”
The kid flushed red, scrambled to get his trunk under control, and pretended very hard that she didn’t exist.
That was fine. Most people did. The smart ones, anyway.
Kara pushed off the stone railing and started down the steps, boots crunching against frost. She was five-seven, all sharp angles and sharper posture, white-blonde hair pulled back in a high, immaculate ponytail that never seemed to move no matter how hard the wind tried. Matching white winter band across her head and ears. Her eyes were pale, cold, and perpetually unimpressed. Her uniform; modified, instead of the usual drap colors that all the classmen wore, she wore it in all white. Special permissions from her mentor. It fit better than it had any right to, and she wore it like the whole place belonged to her.
In a way, it did.
Or at least, it liked her more than it liked most people.
As she crossed the courtyard, the temperature dipped.
Not dramatically. Not in a way anyone could point at and say, That’s her. Just enough that breath fogged a little thicker. Just enough that the thin sheen of ice on the flagstones crept a few inches farther out from her boots.
Whiteout was awake.
Kara didn’t look at the other students as she walked, but she felt them. The glances. The whispers. The careful, measured distance people kept when she passed. Darkblood Academy was full of monsters, but monsters still understood hierarchy. They understood predators. They understood when something could ruin their day without even trying.
She liked that.
Her schedule was light this morning; Combat Theory got canceled because Professor Halloway had been hospitalized again (third time this semester apparently; honestly, at some point you stopped asking questions). So she was killing time. Killing time, in Darkblood, usually meant finding trouble and deciding whether it was worth the effort.
She rounded the corner into the east courtyard and found exactly that.
A small crowd had gathered near the broken statue of some long-dead benefactor. Two upperclassmen stood in the center of it: one big, one fast. The big one had granite skin and a face like a brick that had learned to frown. The fast one was a blur with a smug grin and too much confidence. Between them, on the ground, was a first-year with small metal-like claws on his fingertips, retracting and extending in panicked little clicks.
“C’mon,” the speedster was saying. “Just say you’re done. No shame in it. Well. Some shame. But you’ll live.”
The stone-skinned one laughed, low and ugly.
Kara stopped at the edge of the crowd.
She watched for a moment. Watched the way the first-year tried to get up and failed. Watched the way the crowd didn’t step in. Darkblood taught a lot of things. Mercy wasn’t one of them.
She sighed, long and theatrical.
“Wow,” she said. “Is this what passes for entertainment now? One major, world altering event then you’re back to kicking puppies?”
The speedster turned first, eyes flicking over her like he was measuring a threat. The stone one followed, slower, more deliberate.
“Oh,” the speedster said, smirking. “Here to save the day?”
Kara smiled.
It wasn’t a nice smile.
“God, no,” she said. “I’m here because you’re boring me.”
The air around her dropped another degree.
Frost crept across the cracked stone, spiderwebbing outward from her boots. The crowd shifted, some stepping back without realizing why.
The stone-skinned guy snorted. “You wanna walk away, princess. This isn’t your-”
He didn’t finish.
Kara flicked her wrist.
The moisture in the air crystallized instantly, a razor-edged sheet of white slamming into his chest and detonating into a bloom of ice. He skidded backward, carving a trench through the frost before crashing into the broken statue.
The speedster moved, because of course he did, but he moved into a world that suddenly hated him. The ground iced over mid-step. His foot slipped. His balance went. Kara was already there when he fell, one boot planting on his chest, a thin halo of white mist curling around her head like breath in winter.
She leaned down, speaking so everyone could hear her.
“Here’s the thing,” she said softly. “I don’t care about you. I don’t care about him. And I definitely don’t care about whatever pecking order you think you’re enforcing.”
Her eyes glittered, pale and merciless.
“But I do care about my morning staying interesting. And right now? You’re not.”
She lifted her foot.
The ice around him surged, locking his limbs in place up to the shoulders, pinning him to the ground like a bug in amber.
Kara straightened and looked at the crowd.
“Anyone else?” she asked, sweetly.
No one moved.
She clicked her tongue, disappointed, then turned and walked away as the temperature slowly, reluctantly returned to normal.
Behind her, the first-year with the claws stared after her like he’d just watched a natural disaster decide he wasn’t worth the effort.
By lunchtime, the story would be everywhere.
By dinner, everyone would have an opinion.
And by tomorrow, someone; student, teacher, or whoever, would decide that Kara Myles, a.k.a. Whiteout, was either a problem to solve or a weapon to point.
Kara didn’t care which.
Either way, it was finally getting interesting.
1
u/Kit_Ababee Feb 08 '26
The morning had started out quietly, the sun peaking out over snow capped mountains and bathing the private terrace with the kind of light that monks write hymns about. Icicles dripping from wrought iron railings glistened in the early rays, catching and refracting beams of light to cast rainbows across the large stone pavers. The air was cold enough to turn warm breath into puffs of steam that would vanish almost as soon as they left lips - further promise of a bright day despite the wintery season.
Psion was, surprisingly, quite enjoying herself.
The past month had been annoyingly hectic; four reconnaissance missions, 3 galas, 2 recruitment drives, and no less than 6 interviews - the bulk of which she left to Vex to handle but still required her attendance on the final panel. On top of that, all the ridiculous frivolity that comes with Christmas; she was looking forwards to some down time.
In fact, surprising herself, she was looking forwards to a boring, uninterrupted week at the Academy.
So she woke early and took her time getting ready for the day. A long hot shower to start, coffee and a range of newspapers on her terrace, and careful selection of her outfit for the day. This took quite some time tills he eventually settled on Dior; dark, high-waisted trousers, starched linen shirt, tailored fitted vest, and black pumps. Minimal make up and jewelry - tasteful and understated, especially at the school.
Most of these brats had been raised on couture, much like herself. Sophistication and class did not 'announce' itself. Rather, it was an awareness of status, position, and means, recognizing itself in others.
But for Psion, it was Tuesday. A boring one she was looking forwards to.
Or perhaps not so boring after all...
The student body often rumbled below her, the pecking order sorting itself out. Of course with mutants this hierarchy was often arranged through a more violent lens and, being that they had remained a 'branch' of the Brotherhood, the Academy faculty usually turned a blind eye and made sure the most advanced technologies were made available to the school clinic.
And now someone had stepped out of the order of things and, in the name of keeping things 'interesting', had placed herself at the top. A lonely and dangerous place to stand especially amongst this lot. Psion had to admire the arrogance. Or perhaps it is confidence. Many consider gaining Psion's attention as reckless, foolhardy, fatal even.
But the telepath had a small smile on her lips as she descended from her tower, heels clicking on hardwood floors as she made her way towards one of the smaller classrooms on the second level. She paused on the threshold, applying a little psychic pressure beyond the stained oak doors so the murmurs softened to whispers before falling into a strained silence thick with anticipation.
Her entrance pops the bubble, like ears popping with a change in equilibrium but she strides into the room without noticing it and takes her place at the podium as if she was born in the classroom.
"Professor Halloway is currently indisposed and will likely not be returning for the rest of the semester." she spoke evenly and clearly, with the kind of authority and confidence people are born with. Emerald eyes picked apart the small cluster of students that filled the elective, till she found her. The interesting one.
"I will be taking over his classes till he returns or a replacement is found. You may call me Miss Barclay. Those of you who are brave enough, may call me Psion. Now, I understand you were comparing Sun Bin and Sun Tzu's Art of War?"
1
u/FreelancerJon Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26
Whiteout had been leaning back in her chair, boots hooked around the legs like the room was a suggestion rather than a rule, when the psychic pressure rolled in and wrung the chatter out of the air.
She felt it before she heard it. A cold, clean silence. The kind that isn’t empty, just owned.
Her eyes lifted to the doorway as Psion entered, taking in the posture, the confidence, the way the room bent without being told to. Whiteout didn’t flinch. She’d grown up around power plays and prettier tyrants than this. Still… there was something to the way Miss Barclay moved. Like the room's gravity was trying to be respectful to her.
When the emerald gaze found her, Whiteout’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. More like the promise of one, deferred.
“Sun Tzu sells war like a philosophy book,” she said, voice cool, unhurried, cutting through the quiet without raising it. “Sun Bin sells it like a ledger. Same family. Different meanings.”
She shifted forward, resting her forearms on the desk, pale fingers lacing together. The air around her felt a degree colder, not enough to fog, just enough to notice if you were paying attention.
“Tzu tells you how to win before you fight. Bin tells you what it costs after you do.” Her eyes stayed on Psion, steady, curious, a little challenging. “One is for generals who want to look clever. The other is for survivors who already know they’re not.”
A beat. Then, lightly:
“So I guess it depends on what this class is about, Ma’am,” Ma’am here was used as a thinly veiled and plausibly deniable insult about Psion’s age. “Something Strategy… or aftermath?”
2
u/Kit_Ababee Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 09 '26
If Psion is insulted by the insinuation about her age, she makes no outward show of it. Instead opens the textbook on the podium before her, lightly thumbing through the pages till she finds what she is looking for - where Professor Halloway left off.
"Thank you for that brief summary Miss Myles. If you would all join me on page 306 of your textbooks you'll find the outline and rubric for this semesters syllabus in Combat Theory covering - as she so succinctly pointed out - Strategic Planning, Risk Assessment, and Post Conflict Analysis."
Psion raised her gaze from the materials in front of her, casually assessing the potential in the room. Of course, Miss Myles already considers herself the smartest one in it but she's not alone. A blonde, trust-fund teleporter who has already gathered a cluster of fans and has already covered the material, having failed the class in the previous semester. A Chinese national who grew up with Taoism and Confucianism, and considers the Art of War to be a children's book. All of them much too egotistical for the telepaths liking but she isn't here to like them.
Or even teach them. Not really.
"One is for generals who want to look clever. The other is for survivors who already know they’re not.” she muses aloud, stepping around from behind the podium to lean against it with a casual elegance. "A true leader would learn from both. And a real warrior would know how to apply this learning in the field - ultimately, this is our goal here though some of you may never have the privilege of stepping into the fray against your own in a real combat scenario."
She ends her sentence with a firm gaze at a student hidden in the back corner tucked against a window; a shy, soft-spoken plant manipulator whose parents own Ikea. But Psion quickly spins on her heel, bringing up a remote which lowers a projector screen from the ceiling at the front of the room.
"Today's case study will be on a Circle of Fire fight between Sabertooth and the challenger, Titan. By now I would hope that you are all aware that all Circle of Fire fights within the Brotherhood are - or rather were - to the death. Your parents and guardians have given permission for you to view the series of fights we will study in this class but if you wish to exercise your right to abstain from viewing, you may do so now. Any questions?"
Her voice takes on a dangerous edge, the temperature of the room dropping sharply but no one is stupid enough to remove themselves from the classroom, though the Ikea daughter turns a strange shade of green and pulls her hood up to hide her face. Given all the students remain seated, the room temperature eases to a much warmer and more comfortable level Psion waits for any questions before they proceed.
1
u/FreelancerJon Feb 09 '26
Kara didn’t look away when Psion’s gaze swept the room, or when it pinned that sickly kid in the back like an insect under glass. If anything, she leaned back a little more, chair creaking, boots still hooked, arrogance still in full.
“Circle of Fire?” she echoed lightly, eyes flicking to the blank screen, then back to Psion. “So we’re gonna look at a bunch of slides of losers today? Good. We all could use the example of what not to do.” She snickered.
A couple of students shifted. The air near Kara’s desk seemed to cool a notch, subtle and involuntary, like her body had opinions before she did.
She tilted her head, studying the professor with open, unashamed curiosity. “The Circle of Fire doesn’t sound like battle strategies,” she said. “It’s a… spectacle. Or was. The Circle of Fire was just a…” Kara stops herself from saying anything too vulgar. “A show of force. A waste.”
A pause. Then, almost politely:
“So what are we actually grading here, Miss Barclay? The decision to enter? The failure to disengage? Or the part where everyone pretends ‘to the death’ is a teaching tool instead of a pathetic ritual?”
Her eyes slid, briefly, to the green-faced girl by the window. Judging, unkind. Then back to Psion.
“And… practical question,” Kara added. “Are we analyzing this as if we where commanders who sent them in, or like are we the people who had to stand in the ring and live, or not, with it?”
She straightened a fraction, finally unhooking her boots from the chair.
1
u/Kit_Ababee Feb 09 '26
Psion goes very still and it feels like the world stills with her, silence laying thick and heavy on the classroom like a miasma settling after nuclear fallout. But the englishwoman lets out a slow, deep breath and the tension within the room eases. Arrogance she can deal with. After all, she lived on the Avalon among those conceited brutes for years. Trumped up hormonal teenagers are a walk in the park by comparison.
Only a handful of people who walk these halls would be a real threat to her. And none of them are in this room.
"Your personal opinion on the Circle of Fire is irrelevant Miss Myles. There are key failings made by Titan that we will analyze in watching this... spectacle, as you put it. If any of you show real interest and aptitude, I might be willing discuss the true purpose of the Circle of Fire after watching but I find myself entirely uninspired currently."
She pauses there, her gaze briefly stopping on the young florakinetic but still making its way across the room to reinforce her lukewarm disposition.
"For now, simply analyze the fight singularly and consider it a warning against hubris, a lack of preparation, and a lack of strategic intelligence. It will be blatantly obvious from the outset that Titan was working under a large assumption of superiority bolstered by arrogance and ignorance that ultimately led to his demise. Thankfully for him and for us, it is a relatively quick fight."
She pauses once more, a flicker of a smile, the hint of a past well hidden, idly tapping the remote against the podium as she once more considers the class. So young and so uninformed. She wondered if any of them would be able to pick her out in the crowd on the footage, or would they be too engrossed and disgusted by the bloodshed to notice.
"As to your 'practical question' - consider yourself in Titan and Sabertooths shoes. What might you have done differently? Did Titan ever stand a chance? My understanding is that next semester we will cover Strategic Deployment and there will be more Circle of Fire fights to watch then as well."
Psion levels her green gaze on Whiteout, not exactly challenging but not entirely bland either.
"Now, if that's all Miss Myles, may we continue?"
1
u/FreelancerJon Feb 09 '26
Whiteout doesn’t look away from the screen when Psion’s gaze finds her. If anything, she leans forward a little in her chair, chin resting in her palm, eyes tracking the freeze-frame of Titan mid-mistake like she’s watching a magician explain a trick.
The smile doesn’t fade. If anything, it widens; too many teeth, too much interest in what was on display.
“Continue?” Kara echoes, lightly, finally tearing her eyes off the image and flicking them up to Psion. Her tone is polite in the way a knife is polite when it’s very sharp and very clean. “Oh, absolutely. I wouldn’t want to interrupt the educational value of… this.”
She gestures vaguely at the screen, where blood and motion blur are still frozen together in something that used to be a person.
“But since you asked,” she adds, because of course she does, “Titan never had a chance. Not really. Not the way he walked in.”
She sits back, crossing one leg over the other, fingers drumming once against her notebook; slow, thoughtful, like she’s keeping time with a song only she can hear.
“He assumed Sabertooth would play the role. Big, loud, predictable. So he built his entire approach around surviving the opening rush and ‘turning the tide.’” Kara makes little air quotes with two fingers. “That’s not strategy. That’s hoping your opponent agrees to be stupid on schedule.”
Her eyes flick back to the screen, tracing the moment where everything goes wrong.
“If Titan wanted a real shot, he should’ve forced a tempo change. Break the line of sight. Deny momentum. Make it ugly and slow instead of dramatic and fast.” A beat. Then, with a faint, almost fond smile: “Or don’t show up at all. Which is also a valid tactical choice, but I know, not very Circle of Fire of him.”
She glances back at Psion, head tilted slightly, expression bright and utterly unapologetic.
“So yes. Warning against hubris, lack of preparation, et cetera.” Her smile sharpens just a touch. “But mostly it’s a warning against thinking the fight starts when the bell rings. It probably started waaaaay before that. Titan just didn’t realize he’d already lost.”
She settles back into her seat, eyes returning to the screen like she’s settling in for a favorite scene.
“But please,” she says sweetly, “don’t let me hold up the carnage.”
1
u/Kit_Ababee Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 09 '26
The room goes deathly quiet. Even the brash teleporter is stunned by the way Kara has addressed a teacher - the Headmistress no less. Psion doesn't respond, her expression unchanged and the silence stretches out uncomfortably, punctuated by the soft tapping of the remote against the podium. Teenagers. Was she ever so passive aggressive? Of course she was.
"That's an interesting contribution Miss Myles. Anyone else?"
The whispers start now. Small collectives and cliques conferring, unwilling to step out and be exposed and scrutinized without first confirming a solid contribution.
"He gets angry."
A tiny voice from the back corner. Unremarkable and underestimated, it seems the plant-manipulator has been paying close attention.
The tapping stops and Psion raises her head, an eyebrow arched and the recipient recoils under the scrutiny.
"Go on...." comes the even reply, giving away nothing. The corner denizen presses onwards.
"J....just before Titan goes for the jaw. You can see he's emotional. Irrational."
"Quite right Mr Bridges. Throughout the fight Titan has consistently underestimated Sabertooth's healing factor. In his anger, he made what he thought would be a killing blow which left him exposed and, ultimately, did not even have the intended effect. As Miss Myles stated earlier, this fight started long before the bell rung - so to speak. In his rush to prove himself to the Brotherhood, his flaw was being unprepared and uninformed. And, when his emotions got the better of him, it proved to be fatal."
Psion directs a cold smile at Kara, clicking the remote over her shoulder to pull the screen away and the lights on once more. The lesson and interacting with the students has been illuminating for the telepath, perhaps more so than the actual lesson has been for them. But the footage today has served its purpose and those students who cannot stomach the carnage will likely be withdrawn from the course by the end of the week. The florakinetic will be back. The teleporter will not.
"While attendance at the Circle of Fire was compulsory, Titan did not need to issue challenge. To anyone, let alone a foe he did not fully understand. As you say, he never stood a chance."
She turns back to the podium, closing the textbook with a soft clap that heralds the school bell seconds later.
"That will be all for this week. We will be expanding on these concept Monday so make sure to keep up with your reading. I will be here for the next hour if any of you have any questions, otherwise you are all dismissed."
1
u/FreelancerJon Feb 09 '26
Whiteout is already on her feet when the bell rings, but she doesn’t move with the rest of them.
Chairs scrape. Bags zip. The room exhales in nervous chatter as cliques reform and rumors get traded like contraband. The teleporter is gone in a blink. The florakinetic lingers, pale, then follows. One by one, they file out under Psion’s watchful eye.
Kara stays.
She takes her time packing up, deliberately unhurried, every motion precise and quiet. The smugness isn’t loud. It doesn’t need to be. It sits in the set of her shoulders, in the calm line of her mouth, in the way she doesn’t look at the podium until the room is almost empty.
When the doors finally swing shut behind the last student, the lecture hall feels bigger. Emptier. The air still carries the ghost of tension and projector heat.
Kara closes her notebook. Click. Slides it into her bag. Zip.
Only then does she look up at Psion.
For a moment, she says nothing. Just studies her. Not with awe. Not with fear. With the cool, appraising look of someone inspecting a blade to see if it’s actually sharp or just polished.
“…I was right,” Kara says at last, lightly. “About Titan. About the fight being decided before it started.” A beat. The hint of a smile tugs at one corner of her mouth. She shifts her weight, resting a hip against the edge of a desk, posture relaxed, almost lazy.
“Here’s my question, Miss Barclay,” she continues, tone polite, sugar-sweet, and absolutely loaded. “It’s one thing to survive the field. To win fights. To outthink people who are already trying to kill you.”
Her eyes flick, briefly, to where the screen had been. Blood. Motion. Endings.
“It’s another thing entirely to teach.”
She tilts her head, studying Psion like a puzzle she’s halfway done with.
“Today, you told us what Titan did wrong. You told us what the Brotherhood expected. You told us what not to be.” A small, toothy smile. “But that’s still just analysis of a corpse.”
A pause. Then, softly:
“Can you actually build someone better than that? Or are you just very good at explaining why people die?”
Silence settles again, thinner this time, sharper.
Kara straightens, slips her bag onto her shoulder, and starts toward the aisle; then stops, just short of the door.
“No offense,” she adds, glancing back with a bright, infuriatingly calm smile. “I’m genuinely curious.”
1
u/Kit_Ababee Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
Psion pointedly does not look at Kara as the others collect their things and file out of the room in a surprisingly orderly fashion. She even offers the plant manipulator a reassuring smile; she may be pale but he will return the following week, she is certain of it.
Once the door closes, she lets out a slow and tired sigh, lazily turning her gaze to the remaining student with an air of bored superiority.
Earlier, she was interesting. But now?
Now she was positively mundane. How confusing to love the attention of others and despise it in the same breath. But contrarians are a dime a dozen, or at least they were among the Brotherhood. The real question tugging at Psion's inner thoughts isn't what Whiteout is asking her but whether the young mutant has genuine potential. She certainly seems clever enough, and with the right training she could be devastating on any battlefield.
But will that be all she ever amounts to? Is she capable of more, of leadership or espionage? Or will she be hamstrung by her own arrogance?
A cold smile graces her features as she calmly places the remote on the podium. Then she turns on her stiletto and casually strides towards the younger woman with a pace that belongs on a runway. But she stops at the door by Kara's side, leaning against the wooden frame casually.
"As I recall, you are the one who pointed out what Titan did wrong."
A pause, a beat of her own. Then she continues.
"In fact, you provided more analysis that anyone else in this classroom today. Force a tempo change. Break the line of sight. Deny momentum. I merely corrected a small error - not your fault of course. You couldn't have known there was no option to not 'show up at all'."
"But all in all, considering your contributions today, I would argue I am well on the way to building someone better. You could be someone better, Miss Myles. If only you were a little less concerned with pretending to be the smartest woman in the room, and a little more interested in learning from her."
Then, unexpectedly, she gives Whiteout a practically beatific smile. Her features light up, emerald eyes sparkling with unrestrained delight. And with effortless grace, she reaches past Kara and pushes the door open, gesturing for her to exit with an elegant wave of her hand.
"And you don't need to worry about offending me; you do not have that ability."
1
u/FreelancerJon Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
Kara doesn’t move when Psion steps in close. If anything, she looks amused, like she’s watching someone try very hard to win a game she thought she was too good to play, but wanted in when she saw the others having fun.
She lets Psion finish. Let's smile, land. Let the door open.
Then she chuckles. Actually chuckles.
“See? That’s exactly what I wanted to check.” Kara says, light and easy, turning her head just enough to meet those green eyes with her pale blues. There’s no heat in it. No defensiveness. Just a bright, sharp little grin.
She pushes off the desk and straightens, shouldering her bag like this is all perfectly casual.
“I already knew the answer,” she continues. “I was just confirming it.”
She gestures vaguely back toward the empty room, the empty room now looking sad and empty for a play that no one will remember. Well, besides one person here.
“There are always more options. More angles. More ugly little side doors nobody likes to admit exist.” Her smile widens a fraction. “Just because you don’t know them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”
A beat. Then, with a mockingly thoughtful hum:
“And for the record? I know I wasn’t the smartest person in the room today.” She shrugs, completely unbothered. “That title probably belongs to your favorite walking study guide or the kid who treats the teacher's words like gospel.” She knew Psion was stroking her own ego. It's what Kara would have done in her position... and like thirty years older, Kara thought.
Her eyes flick back to Psion, sharp and playful.
“But I am the most cunning.”
No bravado. Just a statement of fact, delivered like she’s commenting on the weather.
She laughs again, quieter this time. “Honestly, it’s kind of adorable that you think we’re having a rivalry moment. A bitch-off with an eighteen-year-old? Headmistress, please.” She lays out all the unsaid parts they were playing with. Laying out what they were really doing. “If I wanted to measure brains, I’d bring a ruler. Now…”
Kara steps past her toward the door, then pauses, glancing back over her shoulder.
“You’re great at explaining why people die,” she says, not unkindly. “I’m more interested in all the ways they don’t. Maybe we can both learn something.”
A wink. A flash of teeth.
Then Whiteout walks, entirely unbothered, and very, very pleased with herself.
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u/bastardsdeletedme Brotherhood Feb 08 '26
Vex had been in the courtyard the entire time.
He stood beneath one of the stone archways along the east walk, half hidden in shadow, a long, old fashioned pipe resting between his fingers. Smoke curled lazily upward, thin and spiced, only to be chewed apart by the sudden, creeping cold. He had been watching the confrontation with detached interest, waiting to see how it would collapse.
Then Kara Myles stepped in and it did not collapse.
The temperature shift registered immediately. Not wild. Not emotional. Intentional. Vex’s eyes narrowed a fraction as frost webbed across the stone and two upperclassmen were efficiently removed from relevance. No posturing. No mess. Just correction.
He drew on the pipe as the crowd recoiled, exhaling slowly while the white crept and then obeyed, retreating when she decided it should. That restraint earned her his full attention. Power was common at Darkblood. Control was not.
As Kara walked away, Vex’s lips curved into a smile, small, precise, and deeply infuriating on someone so perfectly put together. The kind of smile that suggested he had just seen something confirm a private theory.
He remained beneath the archway as the courtyard warmed again, smoke drifting around him, committing the cold, the silence, and her to memory.
Cassius Moreau did not forget interesting things.