SKIDS

Real name: Sally Blevins
Occupation: Street Courier
Identity: Skids' mutant status is not generally unknown to the Public.
Legal status: Citizen of the United States; Runaway Minor
Other aliases: Skids
Place of birth: Detroit, Michigan
Marital status: Single
Known relatives: Bill Blevins (father), Matilda Blevins (mother)
Group affiliation: None
Base of operations: Greater New York City Area
First appearance: March, 2001
History:

Born in 1984, to Bill and Matilda, Sally Blevins seemed at first to be destined for a non-descript life of relative obscurity in the suburbs of Detroit. Her father, a steelworker, and mother, a secretary, were able to provide a healthy middle class life for themselves for much of the eighties and into the early nineties. While they were by no means rich, they were well off, both incomes allowing for a large house, two cars and other things that come to mind when one thinks of the American dream. Sally was a bright, cheerful child, and while not exceptionally intelligent, she showed spirit and a willingness to learn that gave hints of a promising future.

It is so unfortunate that many of those early, happy, memories are so overshadowed by the darkness that wormed its way into her family, eventually. Like a cancer, the happiness and comfort that Sally found at home was slowly drained away, year after year, until there was little joy left for anyone of the Blevins' household. By the time she had reached the age of sixteen, the trip home was akin to a dead man walking, filling her with dread and fear in such horrific amounts that she to this day still bares the emotional scars of what transpired. Sally Blevins became the product of an abusive father, the hands that held her lovingly transformed into a fist that beat her into the shell that she made solid, walling her off from everything that could harm her.

But how could this happen? How could a loving, stable family take such a horrific turn? The abuse that Sally and her mother endured did not come all at once, the anger and frustration and hopelessness that transformed a loving father into someone who could raise a fist to his wife and daughter came upon them slowly, in the way that many of the truly dark and evil things in the world tend to move.

The downward spiral in Sally's home life began at the turn of the decade, though 1990 started out as a normal enough year for her. She was six years old, and school was just starting to become one of those mainstays of her life. The economy had begun to show shakiness, though, and while she couldn't possibly understand the concepts of recession and economic downturn, she could see the tension growing in the eyes of her parents. It started with the release of her mother from her secretarial job, the victim of a massive increase in unemployment that left her father with the only paycheck to hold the family solvent. No matter how hard she tried, her mother could not find a job, as the market dried up to nothing. Tremors of uncertainty certainly shook their family at the start, but things were held together. To Sally's eyes, life actually became better, as her mother was home to take care of her, and the idea of afternoon daycare became simply a memory.

The next few years, Sally enjoyed a sheltered life, as her mother showered her with attention, while her father wrestled more and more with a growing debt, struggling to live at a means that two paychecks had allowed, while only one remained. The physically taxing job he worked during the day was met with the psychological strain of watching the financial plans he had made just scant years before dwindle away to nothing. Costs kept rising, and the dangerous whispers of layoffs began to circulate around the steel mill, slowly, inch by inch draining his ability to cope. And still, Sally played on, day passing day, even as her mother turned a worried eye to her husband time and again.

Sally's father held up under the strain for several years, but by the mid nineties, one after another turn of bad luck had worn away his nerves. Gone was the second car, the first suddenly prone to break downs, Sally found herself wearing fewer and fewer new clothes, and the meals seemed to lose much of their flavor. In all honesty, the food had never changed, but the atmosphere had, as her father turned to drinking to find a way to escape and shield him from the dread. It was around when Sally was just ten years old that the first fights began, the loud voices rousing her from her sleep and mother and father yelled. She learned quickly to curl up tighter, pillow over her head and try to ignore the sound, a twitch of fear coming with every loud crash, slam of a door or cry out of pain. This was the moment that Sally's happy world began to fracture and plummet towards a nightmare.

As her father's drinking grew more and more frequent, life in her home began to resemble a dull repeat of the same scenes. Sally would go to school and come home, helping her mother to fix dinner before her father arrived, a mad race that if lost would result in an explosion of anger. Her father drank nearly constantly, often yelling at the drop of a hat and becoming more and more violent with each passing week. At first she was protected, a victim instead of witnessing him hit her mother and then turn around and apologize once he had sobered up. A victim, also, of watching her mother accept the beatings, time and again, as if she was responsible for the entire situation, often telling Sally not to blame her father for his violence. Her reprieve from harm was short lived, though, as once when just barely eleven, she got in the way of one of her father's attacks, becoming the target instead, as his heavy handed blow sent her reeling to the floor. Her small body was battered and bruised by the pain of the blow, but she pulled herself to her room and hid there, finding herself, too, making excuses for the strike, and accepting his apology some time later when he was his old self once more. When it happened again, a few days later, it was easier to excuse and forgive, and repetition soon beat the will out of her body and soul, her father becoming two people in her eyes, the loving one, and the dark, brooding one. She quietly learned to fear the second, hoping against hope that she could somehow placate him, and feel the love of the first.

In all the turbulence of her home life, Sally eventually moved on to middle and high school, her bruises and trips to the doctor explained away, time and again. She worked hard in her studies, though distracted often by the violence at home, but also she found other ways to escape the fear she lived with day to day. The most notable way was when she was lucky enough to be introduced to a fad that hit the scene in the mid-nineties, rollerblading. When on her skates she was able to feel free, moving fast and low to the ground and able to outrun the dread that her father had begun to bring forth in her. She became very skilled, able to do nearly anything on wheels that she could do without them, earning the nickname 'Skids' from the knack she had for tricks. She developed a small number of friendships in school and after, especially when she spent time in parks and on her 'blades. Still, each of these friends were kept at a distance, no one allowed to see her home nightmare, and no one allowed close enough to see just how much pain she was in. Her father controlled her and her mother, beat them, and in the beating Sally accepted the responsibility, for that was the example her mother gave her. No other person could be allowed to see that stigma, no one would understand it like she and her mother did.

After six long years under the shadow of her father's abuse, Sally slowly found herself moving more towards escapism and away from the self-blame that she saw in her mother each night. Her family life hit rock bottom the year that her father was laid off from work. The drinking and abuse turned from a weekly event into a nearly nightly occurrence. In a way, it was the friends she had that helped her to see a different way, however terrifying it might be, as Sally was exposed to night after night of sheer terror, followed by a nearly surreal calmness during the day. Escapism drove her to stay out later and later, spending afternoons and evenings skating with friends, and tempting fate each time, more than once being treated to a pounding after missing dinner, by her father. Internally, she was slowly torn apart, as the rebellion she saw in her peers fought against the pressure and terror that six years of abuse had built into her mind.

Unfortunately, her luck ran out one night in her room, after she had slipped through her bedroom window, well after dinner, to the sound of her father yelling in the master bedroom. The creaking of floorboards alerted her to movement, just before her door opened, revealing her mother. For a silent moment, eyes met and locked, each reading the emotion in the other as she saw the hopelessness and sadness in her mother, a swelling of loathing of the entire situation building inside of Sally's gut as she noticed the swollen eye and split lip that marred her mother's beauty. For a split second, all the fear and hopelessness seemed ready to turn to anger and rebellion, she felt on the edge of a breakthrough, ready to face her father and yell back at him as he so loudly yelled at her; but it all crumbled to dust when her mother was forcefully shoved aside, and her father, anger seething from his massive bulk, suddenly filled her vision. At once her knees felt weak, and the color drained from her face, even as she found herself staring into the rageful, bloodshot eyes that she knew indicated he had been drinking. As if in slow motion, she watched him advance, step by step, his arm rising up, fingers curling into a meaty fist. Her body tensed, knowing the blow to come, and even as she knew she should be cowering, should at least try to shield herself from the attack, she could not bring herself to move. Step by step, seconds stretched until they felt like minutes, and as she watched his fist go up, her eyes instead fell on her mother, seeing her simply watching. Then a split second later, the blow fell, a flash of utter terror through every nerve in her body mixed with the realization that her own mother would forsake her to such a beating suddenly hit at the same moment, and she found herself airborne. Sally landed in a crumple next to her bed, as her father stormed out, dragging her mother with him, and it was all she could do to just lay there, breathing.

It took over a minute of numbness before she realized she hadn't felt the blow...

The realization that she hadn't be touched by her father slowly sunk in, as she laid there, as did the soon to be familiar warm numbness that covered her from head to toe, anywhere her skin should be exposed to the air. The second surprise was when she tried to get up, finding herself slipping and sliding, unable to find purchase with the floor or her bed. Only knowing that the last thing she wanted was her father back in her room kept Sally from crying out, especially when she realized there was a shimmer about her skin and clothes. With the adrenaline pumping through her system already beginning to wear off, the shock after shock slowly deadened her to the whole situation, until she finally found herself laying on her back, on the floor and able to focus on the new feelings across her body. With concentration, she tried again to stand up, this time willing herself to stay, and not slide... and shakily at first, she managed to get to her knees. Actively thinking about it, she got to her feet, and looked in a mirror, the shimmer across her body obvious, and making her heart race, but more important was that there was not a mark on her, nor the telltale throbbing that would have heralded the bruise. Within an hour, she had figured out how to move, literally re-learning how to walk, but thankfully much of the retraining was almost instinctual, as she learned that she could make herself 'sticky' or 'non-stick' at will, and thankfully the shimmering seemed to fade to a barely noticeable effect once she had calmed down.

Once she had a modicum of control, she suddenly remembered her father, and the thought sent another shiver down her spine. In a few hours, he would be showing up to apologize, but this time she wouldn't take it, wouldn't be here to even give him the chance. She remembered the look on her mother's face while she looked on, and for the first time in her life, her home felt more like just another house on the street. With a quick motion she packed as much as she could into a backpack, grabbed her 'blades and what money she had saved, and then left through her window. She left home, and never looked back. By the time her father had looked in on her room to apologize, she was already at the bus station, with a ticket east in hand.

Once Sally found herself in New York City, the farthest east she could go on her limited funds, she had no idea what to do next. She wandered the streets for several days, buying hot dogs and keeping to herself, while she watched her scant few dollars dwindle away. Strangely enough, she wasn't cold, even when sleeping on snow covered benches, and she managed to eat, with effort, learning that she could drop her field with extreme effort of calming herself. Unfortunately, she also learned that without that strong force of will, her forcefield came on once again immediately, cutting her off from the cold, but also deadening her senses. She moved from building to building, and street to street, her mind a jumble and needing the mindless wandering to help bring order and direction to it all. Seemingly at random she found herself standing before a courier shop; one of several dozen that work the streets of New York, moving packages and letters across town faster than the mail can keep up. She made her choice then, and waited till morning, walking inside and applying for a job.

It wasn't too difficult to fudge her information enough to get the job, and while the first few months were difficult, she managed to get enough funds saved to rent a postage stamp sized apartment not far from her work. For almost the last year she has been working as a courier, choosing her roller blades instead of the more common bicycle. She still remembers where she was when the news showed reports of the 'Black Prom' as it came to be called, too she remembers watching with others in a storefront as televisions broadcast 'Magneto' and the speech he made during the disruption of the Symposium. She doesn't know what to make of any of it, instead choosing to hide her nature as best she can. She has many acquaintances from work, but few close friends, and none she spends more than an hour outside of work with a week, close friends would have a chance of realizing what she is. Practice has made day to day life at least manageable, allowing her to keep the field nearly invisible and also giving her a chance to learn to make the best of her situation, as her rollerblading has never been better or faster.

So this is the Sally Blevins that walks the streets of NYC today, going by the name Skids, and making quite the name for herself by reputation as one of the better couriers on the circuit, she dreams of something better, someday. Yet the stigma of being a mutant makes her cautious, and worse she worries more about the father she left behind. In her mind, being exposed as a mutant would be bad, but nothing on Earth will ever drag her back to the place she once called home, where the father of her nightmares waits.

Height: 5'5" Weight: 115 lbs.
Eyes: Blue Hair: Blonde
Unusual physical characteristics: Skids' forcefield is typically invisible but can manifest as a shimmer when she is emotionally distressed. It is both cold and generally frictionless.
Strength level: Skids possesses the normal human strength of a girl her age, height, and build who engages in strenous daily exercise.
Known superhuman powers: Skids is able to generate a stunningly powerful forcefield centered upon herself. It allows for excessive amounts of enviromental insulation as well as protecting her from most forms of physical and energy attacks. She has only a small level of control over the forcefield, focused at this moment upon varying the level of friction upon its surface, and emotional trauma and physical abuse have locked it into a nearly constant 'on' state.
Other abilities: Skids is an exceptional skater, and well versed in the streets and alleyways of New York City
Weapons and paraphernalia: Just her 'blades. Never leave home without them.
Other notes: The Surgeon General warns that excessive exposure to Skids may lead to dangerous levels of Angst.