Yvette Petrovic

By request of the previous player and/or mod decision, the Phase 1 version of this character is not available for applications. They are available as a new Phase 2 version only. If you have questions, check the FAQ on applications, or feel free to contact the mods at x_moderators @ googlegroups . com.

PHASE 1

Yvette Petrovic - deceased
File:Yvette.jpeg Portrayed by Saoirse Ronan
Codename:	Penance
Affiliations:	Red X/X-Corps, X-Men
Birthdate:	August 8, 1992

Journal:	Stranger In A Strange Land
Player:	(Former) Rossi

"She's an adorable ball of can't-touch-yet..." - Angelica Jones

Yvette Petrovic was an Albanian, raised in Kosovo. Initially quiet and timid, she found her feet and blossomed into a serious young woman determined to make a difference. She was killed during an X-Men mission in January 2015.

Details

Name: Yvette Petrovic

Aliases: 'Vette, Evie, Pendim (Albanian for "Penance"), Penny, Hje (Albanian for "Shadow"), Coppertop, Knuckles (X-Men trainee name), Penance (X-Men code name), Half-Pint Havoc (roller derby name), Mutate 105

First Appearance: August 28, 2006

Place of Birth: Albania

Citizenship: Albanian, but raised in Pristina, Kosovo.

Relatives: Eva Petrovic (mother), Ivan Marinkov (father - deceased); two elder half-brothers, not yet named; Adrijana Marinkov - half-sister.

Education: Graduate of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, currently a freshman at Empire State University;

Relationship Status: Dating Fred Dukes

Occupation: University student

Team Affiliation: X-Men; Red X field leader; X-Corps

Biography

Childhood

Yvette was was born two years after hostilities began in Kosovo after the rise of Slobodan Milosevic as a political force. The area was a dangerous place to be, with ancient ethnic tensions rising again and Milosevic's armed gangs running rampant through the country even before war officially broke out. Her mother Eva was a teenager at the time conflict began - she lived with her Muslim family in a small Albanian rural village close to the border with Serbia. At eighteen Eva was attacked and raped by a gang of Milosevic's men and her father and brother taken - they were never seen again. Eva survived the experience but subsequently discovered she was pregnant. Driven out of their village by the escalating violence and the ostracism of their neighbours, Eva and her mother fled, eventually reaching a refugee camp run by Medicans Sans Frontiers and the Red Cross. Eva gave birth to Yvette shortly afterwards, a month premature - the baby was named at Eva's request by the French doctor attending the birth.

Eva's mother died the following winter and Eva and her daughter spent the next several years at various refugee camps, frequently in squalid conditions. Eventually the Red Cross was able to reunite Eva with relatives living in Pristina - her father's relations with whom she'd had little contact and who had suffered their own losses during the conflict. They reluctantly took Eva and her daughter in, seeing her as bringing shame on the family by being an unmarried Muslim girl with a child. Yvette was tolerated, frequently referred to by the family as Eva's 'penance' for the crime of allowing herself to be dishonoured and for rejecting their faith. The name stuck and became a sort of nickname for the small girl. When Yvette was seven, NATO bombed Kosovo in a series of strikes against Milosevic - it was commonplace for Yvette and her family to have to hide in the basement of their apartment block during raids and several friends and neighbours were killed or injured, including Eva's uncle, the head of the household.

When the war ended, Eva moved out of her relatives' apartment and found work in a factory to support herself and her daughter. She became a hard, uncompromising woman determined to survive whatever what might come next. She and her daughter both had degrees of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Eva's surfacing in bouts of depression, mood swings and an obsession with the war - she told her daughter everything, including how she was conceived, and these stories had their impact on Yvette. She grew into a quiet, withdrawn girl, seldom talking to her classmates and frequently hiding in closets and under tables when confronted by something unpleasant. In post-war Kosovo she was merely one more traumatised child among the thousands and never saw anything dysfunctional in either her origins or her family situation.

At twelve and a half, Yvette's power manifested - patches of her skin would become thick and hard and turn dark red, but always returned to 'normal' after a few days or weeks. She managed to hide this from her mother and teachers for around six months. When Eva found out, she panicked, thinking Yvette would become a target much as Eva and her family had become targets because of their ethnicity. She removed Yvette from school and refused to let her out of their apartment or near the windows during daylight hours - for her own protection. Government services and police because involved approximately four months later, following up reports from neighbours that something strange was going on. Yvette was removed from her mother's care and placed in a State-funded institution for the safety of others. During her three months there she was targeted by her fellows and became even more withdrawn, her power 'on' more often than not and the physical changes becoming more apparent - her hands, feet and hair began to change as well and her skin became tougher.

Unknown to those who ran the institution, an enterprising staff member was making himself a tidy amount of money, 'selling' the more obviously mutant children to a European-based human trafficking ring similar to that encountered by the X-Men in X-Men Mission: Trans-Siberian Hustle and claiming they had escaped. Yvette became his most recent investment and she was taken from the institution one night and handed over. The shock and the harsh treatment drove her further and further into herself, to the point where she became catatonic and her skin virtually impenetrable and razor-sharp, barely resembling a human being any more.

A New Life

Purchased by a desperate Marius Laverne in France in order to help with his powers, Yvette remained in a catatonic state even after their rescue. Charles Xavier and David Haller worked in concert to telepathically encourage her to come out of her withdrawn state. Awakening to a strange environment with little memory of the last six months, she initially panicked and fled, retrieved by Paige Guthrie. She adapted quickly, making several friends. Including, strangely, Tommy Jones, bonding over a mutual love of poetry. The reaction of Kyle Gibney to their friendship proved to be the impetus for Tommy to become more social, after he realised that the other students didn't actually hate him as he had thought. She alerted Jennie Stavros to Marius' unwell state in Vitiation, the first glimmers of memory returning to her by both students' use of the nickname 'Penance' in her hearing.

The school tracked down Yvette's mother and Yvette returned to Kosovo for several weeks. The extremes of her mutation caused her problems and the stress of the situation as well as events in Prague exacerbated things and Yvette and her mother decided that the school would be the best place for her to learn control. She returned to the school as a student in November 2006, rooming with Laurie Collins and attending classes with the other freshmen, Forge's self-repairing cloth helping her to not destroy things and hurt people through casual contact in the meantime. She also struck up a friendship of sorts with Logan, with the gruff X-Man teaching her to carve wood, and with Kyle, having forgiven him upon his peace offering of a Piglet toy made of Kevlar, that she couldn't damage.

Marius eventually found the courage to speak to her, and was forgiven for his actions - Yvette was actually pleased that her powers had helped someone. She began remembering more and more about her missing six months, occasionally waking with nightmares. Fortunately, her roommate Laurie's powers were beneficial to the young girl, acting to help calm her. Laurie's powers also enabled Yvette's skin to soften, and she began to have a wider range of facial expressions as time wore on. However, when half of her suite were put into a mass coma, the stress and shock of seeing her friends in a state similar to the one she herself had been in caused her to relapse.

In February 2007, Yvette found the courage (thanks to a conversation with Logan) to leave the mansion grounds for the first time, accompanying Angelo Espinosa to dinner at his mother's house. That first step was followed by her first field trip, joining Nathan's ice-climbing group. A conversation with Nathan about doing good led to her volunteering to help Elpis, much as her friend Sooraya Qadir was doing. This offer was especially timely, as the bombings of the Elpis offices in Tel Aviv occurred shortly after and both Yvette and Sooraya took it upon themselves to help Bobby Drake and Rahne Sinclair, who remained with the US branch. She also joined the volunteer service Red X around this time.

This progress was unfortunately halted when Yvette went on the ill-fated field trip to the Conservatory. Terrified by the attack on the group, desperately worried about Forge, Yvette's emotional state was reflected in her control lapsing to the point her skin was as hard and sharp as it had been when she had first arrived at the school. It was this state that enabled her to survive being eaten by an allosaur, which Tommy and Mondo were able to kill and she tore her way free with no physical harm. Not everything was bad, however - it was through synching with Yvette's powers that enabled Marius to stay safe, and she was able to assist her fellow students in a hunting party. Upon their return to the school, Laurie was able to help Yvette soften her skin enough to receive medical treatment for the cut sustained when she shared powers with Marius. It was at this time that Yvette asked for sessions with the mansion's child psychiatrist, Leonard Samson, to deal with both the trauma of the dinosaur experience, and to deal with the memories of her lost six months, which had fully returned.

The relapse had longer-term effects than her physical shape. During her initial time at the school, there had been such a confusing blur of experiences she had not fully processed her new appearance - this time she had the time and the awareness to be aware of how different she looked, and she didn't like it. Talk of the upcoming prom made things more difficult, and Marie's casual question about Yvette going raised a number of sore points. She was convinced in the end to attend, although the gender swapping of the staff was another stressor she had trouble dealing with.

Turning Point

The crisis point came in May 2007, when Jennie, Marius and Kyle were abducted by Rory Campbell. The event terrified Yvette, reminding her of her own abduction, and she spent much of the time the students were missing hiding in various corners. Upon their return and after reassuring herself they were safe, Yvette set about the arduous task of regaining her courage and facing the world again. Unfortunately, her first attempt was the ill-fated trip to Vegas.

Trapped in Murderworld, Yvette found herself having to rely on herself. This, combined with being able to actually help others in their escape, set her on the path to realising she didn't always have to be a victim. At Parents' Day, with newly-returned Jonothon Starsmore supporting her, she faced her mother's outrage and refused to leave the school, knowing it was the best place for her. Slowly but surely she began taking her first true steps towards independence, including the first stirrings of adolescence.

The disappearance of Attilan and the apparent deaths of her friends Crystal and Forge hit her hard, especially given the mind-controlled Crystal's behaviour to Yvette shortly before her return to the school. Yvette relied heavily on her friends and especially her favourite teachers during this time. When Forge and Crystal returned, the changes were hard to assimilate, especially Crystal's elevation from student to teacher, and Yvette became especially awkward around her.

In the latter half of the year, Yvette's progress was up and down. She went to Japan with the other students, and overcame her fears to go out sightseeing. New friends - such as Kevin Ford - were made that made the stresses of the mansion (such as the evacuation) easier to bear, but as she began to notice boys more, her fragile self-image took some blows. Seeing those with similar touch issues - Marie and Kevin - establish relationships was difficult for her, as she felt her own situation made such things impossible, and an incident in the mall whilst Christmas shopping with Jane Doe and Forge's clumsy attempt at making her feel better that backfired, only reiterated her perception of herself as permanently untouchable. With Logan's return to Canada and a public confrontation between Shiro Yoshida and Lorna Dane, Yvette began actively doubting the school and the X-Men, seeing one standard of conduct for students and one for team.

The conference in Whistler was a chance to get away from the tense atmosphere, and her increasing feelings of being smothered. With the avalanche and the resulting disaster relief operation in conjunction with Beta Flight, Yvette found her confidence, and potentially her calling - Red X. It was this confidence that helped her cope with the sudden malady that struck down the mansion's psis as well as Cain, although she avoided her roommate as much as she could, finding Laurie's own coping mechanisms of bossy over-protectiveness too much to bear. When the situation was resolved, Yvette returned home to her mother, to consider her options. The visit was cut short by political unrest, but Yvette returned determined to stay at the school and weather whatever was thrown at her.

Growing Up

Over the next year, Yvette grew up in many ways. Her confidence grew, and she made several new friends as well as cemented friendships with established ones. She coped with any number of crises, often able to give a different perspective on things based on her own experiences growing up with war and loss. She also matured emotionally, beginning to notice boys as something other than 'ew' and feeling the distance her powers created keenly. Her friendship with Kevin helped ease some of the loneliness, however his relationship with Jay and a short-lived medical intervention with his powers highlighted to her the differences between them. She continued to work on her control, however, still hopeful that one day she would find her 'off' switch.

Red X continued to be Yvette's dream, and she progressed well. Due to her background, she was better equipped emotionally to deal with witnessing genocide than some of her peers, but the experience still left its marks. Frustration at being unable to help there, and with being treated like a child by many of her peers, built up until it reached boiling point during an Elpis trip to Kosovo. Overhearing a conversation between the Elpis staff and Dr. Pierre Marcel regarding the child slave ring that had taken her, Yvette took matters into her own hands. With Angel joining her, she tracked the man to a warehouse where the gang operated but both girls were captured due to their inexperience. In the rescue mission that followed, Yvette injured former roommate Laurie whilst attempting to attack her kidnapper and ruined a police surveillance operation that would have netted the entire gang.

Stemming from this explosion of self-control, Yvette and Angel were grounded for two weeks and the school itself began examining the student population, attempting to find some kind of response to increasing numbers of incidents. Eventually the New Mutants program was developed, with Yvette embracing the concept eagerly as a chance to prove herself and bond with her new peers as the school enrolled several new (and old) students. The group proved to be capable of working together as a team during the attack on New York when they were cut off from their chaperone Jonothon Starsmore, and managed to fight off an attack from Famine.

In the wake of this small triumph, the ambush that apparently killed Pete Wisdom, Garrison Kane, Danielle Moonstar and Jay hit Yvette hard. She accepted their probable deaths more quickly than many of her peers and fellow residents, having seen such tragedies before, and in the wake of Kevin's departure from the school and Jean-Phillipe's revelation of his status as an agent of Magneto, Yvette made the decision to become an X-Man trainee when she reached seventeen.

2009 marked a more confident, more adult Yvette. She began overcoming her shyness, going out of her way to welcome the many newcomers to the school and going so far as to not only audition but secure the role of Puck in an inter-mural theatre project and performing, despite a 'curse' that turned out to be a fellow thespian with the power of invisibility and a grudge. She also showed her maturity in a number of situations, calling the school when fellow Red X-er, Jane Doe, was buried under the rubble of a falling building and working with Jean-Paul Beaubier to escape containment in Murderworld following the hijacking of a school outing. Her poise was disrupted however, when first the transformed Jay Guthrie asked her to cut of his metal wings and she was forced to fetch Logan to take him down when Forge intervened on her behalf; and then when a patient of Dr. Samson's, who she had been helping with her mutation, was killed in the bombing of the Salem Center clinic. At the same time, several incidents on the journals pushed her tolerance, and when Spring Break came, she accepted an invitation from Kevin to visit him at the West Coast Annex for a break. It helped, with her returning to the school three weeks later, her equilibrium returned sufficiently for her to assist in a train accident with her fellows.

Maturity notwithstanding, Yvette found herself at the mercy of her hormones, just like any other teenager. With her fellows pairing up around her, she was acutely aware of her physical differences and her inability to touch and she often wished things were different. A plot by her friend Catseye to bring Kevin to the Prom to be her partner was a welcome surprise, despite the tension between Kevin and his former boyfriend, Jay. The messy ending of her roommate's relationship with Julian Keller gave her a distraction from her own issues, and she focussed on helping Angel through it. A Red X trip to Bosnia-Hezegovina as a publicity stunt proved to be more of a distraction than intended - Yvette was seriously injured whilst rescuing a child from a mine with Inez and Dori, winding up with severe internal injuries. A kidney transplant was her only hope of survival and a donor was found - her biological father, a war criminal on death row who refused to give permission for his organs to go to his previously-unknown daughter. Strings were pulled by Emma Frost, who had been training Yvette in her powers for some time, and Yvette was saved, but she was required to spend three weeks on an inhibitor during her recovery period. She returned to the school to convalesce, Kevin returning with her as nurse/bodyguard/Grand Vizier, and revelled in her new-found freedom from the constraints of her powers. Due to the side effects of the device, she could not wear it permanently, and afraid she would never have another chance, she asked Kevin to kiss her, the first she would ever have. It proved to be a memorable experience.

Yvette spent the next few weeks fairly quietly, spending a lot of time in the woods, her usual haven. She and Catseye bonded over mutual feelings of being foreign when Catseye suffered an identity crisis over whether she was cat or girl or actually neither and the two took their driver's permit test together. Her seventeenth birthday was time for reflection, as she made her own quiet plans for her future.

X-Man Trainee

In September 2009, Yvette met with Ororo Munroe and requested permission to become a trainee X-Man. Her trainee name - 'Knuckles' - was decided by journal-wide poll in order to try and close the gulf between the team and the rest of the residents that Yvette had noticed when Laurie had joined up. Her continued recovery from her transplant meant that she was unable to participate in full physical training, so she bent herself to the task of learning everything she could about the other aspects of the team. In November 2009, during a mass break out of mutant felons, she assisted with the communications from the mansion, taking on the role as Ororo's 'assistant' during the briefing. It was also around this time she and Catseye also discussed their respective fathers, deciding for the sake of curiosity about their backgrounds to find out more about them.Once she was deemed to be physcially fit in January 2010, Yvette began her X-Men training in earnest, putting in time in the Danger Room in an effort to develop her combat skills.

Her growing physical maturity, however, proved frustrating to her, as she reacted against the mansion's free and easy attitudes towards sex. Her prudishness stemmed from her growing awareness that while she might develop crushes on several of her male friends, her powers and her younger sibling relationship with them would prevent any kind of romantic attachment, something that was only heightened by Kevin's spoiling of her on Valentine's Day. She found it difficult to accept romantic gestures from someone who would only see her as a younger sister, and eventually found the courage to talk to him about it and her feelings for him. It created a degree of awkwardness between the pair that would only be exacerbated later with Kevin's relationship, break-up and then reunion with Jean-Paul Beaubier and Yvette's jealousy.

Over the next six months, Yvette found herself more and more involved with the X-Men, from a brief arrest and then a search for a fugitive to rescuing refugees on the Indian-Pakistan border to an attack at graduation. It was during the last that Yvette, trying to protect her mother, cut loose on one of the Reavers (villains) with a ferocity she had never shown before - she saved her mother, however the display of violence was too much for Eva, who decided Yvette was too much like her Serbian war criminal father. She went back to Kosovo and has not spoken to Yvette since, something which deeply hurt her daughter.

Haven and Derek

In the wake of the graduation incident, during which classmate and friend Nicholas Gleason was injured and went missing, presumed dead, Yvette invited newcomer and fellow Untouchable, Jared Corbo to go to a street fair in District X with her. While there, she encountered Haven a holistic healer who ran a clinic in the mutant enclave and who offered to help Yvette with her mutation. Sorely tempted, especially following her mother's rejection, Yvette agreed but asked Haven to help all of the Untouchables who were there - herself, Jared, Cammie and Kevin. It seemed like a scam and when nothing immediately happened, none of them thought anything more of it.

The next morning, however, all four awoke to find their powers gone, their mutations genetically erased. This state lasted a month, with investigations placing responsibility on the healer, Haven and determining that the change was indeed permanent. Not everyone was pleased - Cammie, especially, vented her unhappiness on the journals, targeting Yvette as the cause - and eventually Yvette went to spend two weeks with Angel and her mother's side of the family in Seattle. It was there that she had a truly normal life for the first time since she was thirteen.

The truth of the change came out, however; their powers had been 'given' to a mutant boy called Derek, who lived a crippled half-life in the basement of Haven's clinic. He was afflicted by not just the powers of the four Untouchables but also a number of other dangerous or disfiguring abilities, yet was strangely philosphical about his chance to help others. Once the truth was discovered, Derek was brought to the mansion and Haven was arrested by SHIELD; an accidental contact with Jared revealed that the lost powers could be returned and faced with the knowledge that they'd forced someone else to take their burdens, Yvette and the others took their powers back as well.

It was a difficult choice for Yvette and one she would struggle with, even as she turned eighteen and began college, as well as a new role as RA to the younger students. A string of not-so-successful X-Men missions, in which she was captured, depowered and/or beaten in combat, made her doubt her ability to be a useful member of the team. However, the team took on a different view, and in February 2011, she was awarded her tags and made a full team member, something which effected her significantly.

X-Man, College Student and RA

Yvette's first mission as a full team member was to Madripoor, following a lead into the Alpha Flight massacre. It proved to be a narrow escape, not just for Yvette, who was injured by Lady Deathstrike, but for the whole team. Blinded temporarily, Yvette realised the gravity of the task she had taken on with the team. She continued, however, once she had recovered, taking part in an undercover missions at an illegal mutant roller derby ring and found herself enjoying her persona as Half Pint Havoc. Another lesson learned was that she would, in the normal course of things, face the possibility of injuring her teammates - not an easy thought for the girl who feared hurting people more than anything.

Just as she took her duties as an X-Man seriously, so too did she take her position as RA seriously. She took returning student Sarah Vale under her wing, encouraging her to think about joining Red X. She also, with fellow-RA Jean-Phillipe's reluctant help, organised the 2011 Prom. Given no-one broke up a relationship or changed gender, it was considered a rousing success.

School proved to be more difficult - her powers made her stand out and Yvette tended to gravitate towards HeliX as a type of refuge. It proved to be a lucky habit, as the night Laurie's air scrubber broke, Yvette was safely spending the night at the HeliX offices. She was less than impressed upon her return to tales of rampant horniness - the incident once again highlighting the gulf between herself and her fellows, the physical isolation her powers demanded. Marius, aware of the issue, borrowed her powers in a surprise random dance, which damaged the floor but did much to heal her feelings. Slowly, over the months, she began gaining ground on her control issues.

That progress and confidence were severely dented in the wake of the mansion invasion by Nightmare and his people. Cast into a shared nightmare with Angel, Sarah and Klara, Yvette's worst fears came true, with her protective suit failing in the middle of a crowd and then finding herself in a crate, much like the one she had been transported in when she had been sold. Worse, she had to listen to Sarah being tortured by a deranged version of her mentor, Henry McCoy, trapped and unable to do anything to help her. While she knew it was all a dream, the incidents shook her to the core and set her back on her control - not sure she could keep others safe, she took to wearing her team uniform at the mansion, trusting the tough leather to keep others from harm.

Then, just as she was beginning to regain control, tragedy struck with her mother's suicide. Yvette went to the funeral (her relatives were hiding the "shame" of Eva's death by claiming it was a heart attack) with Sarah V. and while they were there, Yvette sought out her father's family - she was turned away at the door, but her half-sister made secret arrangements to meet with them later. Over lunch, Adrijana Marinkov explained that the rest of her family were strongly anti-mutant and that she was hiding her own mutation from them. She and Yvette awkwardly talked and eventually exchanged contact details so that they might email each other in secret. The entire trip, including her being fully rejected by her mother's family, served to reinforce to Yvette that Xavier's was her home and its residents her family.

Yvette made considerable progress after this revelation, trusting her control enough to have her 19th birthday party at an all-ages event at Silver. In what could have been a disaster but actually turned out to be an amusing footnote to Xavier's field trip curse, an attempt by Toad and a new henchman to test a new form of Kick resulted in a lot of high and very happy mutants.

2011 ended on another happy note, with old friends Sooraya Qadir and Catseye returning to the school, the former becoming Yvette's suitemate. Yvette also made another friend, Tangerine, a mutant girl who worked at a District X clothing store for mutants. Pushed by her desire to help her friend keep her job, Yvette even went to Adrienne Frost, one of the staff she still held in awe, to ask her help fund the beleagured outlet.

The Road of Trials

2012 was a tough year, for Yvette and for her friends. When Sooraya had a powers mishap, it was her roomie who tried to help her with her own perspective about accidentally injuring others and advice about perhaps joining the X-Men for further training. Then, at a mutant fundraiser, Yvette found herself nearly engulfed and suffocated by an out-of-control mutant's mass, before having to perform an emergency tracheotomy. She also worked with Megan Gwynn to help calm another manifesting FOHer, supporting the girl in a new use of her pixie dust.

In February 2012, Yvette once again was helping Sooraya, who was abducted when she was to give evidence at a trial in Attilan. While Sooraya managed to free herself, it was with Yvette and Angelo Espinosa that she was able to rescue her friend, Leyu Yoshida. Then in March 2012, she was the voice of reason when her former roomie and friend Angelica Jones moved to England and then promptly moved back, having neglected to inform her flat mate there of her mutation and being 'caught out'. The three became something of a unit, looking after each other and training together with the team.

Everything came crashing down with the Genosha incident. Already distressed by the disappearance of Jenny Ransome, whom she had bonded with over the Red-X program, Yvette was one of the first to propose the ill-fated field trip to the rally at the Genoshan embassy. Taken with the rest of the group, Yvette was one of five mutants put through the mutate process - head shaved, sealed into an environment suit, a number tattooed on her forehead and her free will completely removed. She became Mutate 105, with extra strength and size grafted onto her genetics and her own feral tendencies ramped up to make her unstoppable. It was this killing machine that killing several of the escapees encountered refugees and had to take down; this group included Fred Dukes, who had admitted to Angelo months before he had a crush on the small Albanian girl and who was devastated to see what she had been turned into. They were able to knock her unconscious, and it was only after some hard facts and a telepathic nudge from Emma Frost that Fred - and Jean-Phillipe Colbert - agreed to leave her.

Layla Miller, Ororo Munroe, Vance Astrovik, Molly Hayes and Marius Laverne had their own encounter with Mutate 105 during the battle of the Citadel, barely managing to avoid serious injury. This time, she was subdued by her handler, who surrendered when he realised he was outnumbered, and it was an eerily docile mutate who accompanied Kurt Sefton and a number of others to the labs where the mutate procedure - for her and the other four - was reversed. The group rejoined their fellows in the battle against Thomas Moreau and it was Yvette who finally severed his head.

On her return home, Yvette took refuge in the woods, trying to regain her mental equilibrium despite the gaps in her memory and her control over her powers, which were displaying disturbing changes - while she was no longer as large as she had been as a mutate, or as ferocious, she still had the same 'battle form'. Combined with the feeling that she had done something terrible while in that shape, she was reluctant to let people see it. It was this need to get back under control again that led her to hand over her RA position to Catseye. An incident with Fred in the Danger Room further highlighted the changes in her, when she reacted badly to him risking his life doing unsupervised training. Over time, however, and with several discussions and an intervention from a determined Angel, Yvette began to regain much of her old personality. She joined the newly-formed X-Corps, taking on much of the Red X organisation, and helped rescue Angelo from a doomsday cult in Africa, but there remained a certain distance to her personality, the ghosts of Genosha never quite leaving her.

Progress

2013 proved to be a much better year for Yvette. Firstly because her friend and mentor Logan returned to the mention, but secondly, and most importantly, she and Fred Dukes finally stopped their awkward dance around each other and admitted their mutual attraction, going on their first date. It proved to be successful and the first of many, with the pair settling into a comfortable - and extremely slow moving, due to mutual issues of body image and powers problems - relationship. It did much to boost Yvette's confidence in herself, and she even got the hang of girl talk with her closest friends, Sooraya and Angelica.

This increased confidence was reflected in Yvette's work with X-Corps and primarily Red X. She became the contact point for those wanting to join, with several of the new students and graduates seeking her out and Yvette herself seeking out others, such as Hope Abbott, to encourage them to assist in fundraising events. She also became more proactive on the journals, starting thoughtful discussions on the nature of heroism or on recent events, such as a apparent manifestation in a New York coffee shop. It was perhaps good, then, that Yvette had now knowledge of her role in Rachel's alternate dimension, where that version of Yvette betrayed the mansion out of fear and an empathic bond with Marius Laverne, and was later killed in combat by Korvus Rook'shir - such knowledge would have been difficult for the compassionate and loyal X-Men to hear.

As an X-Man, she grew more skilled, and was part of the team that faced down Magneto]] on Avalon. A year later, she would return to Avalon again, this time as part of a rescue mission instigated by herself to save the mutant population that still remained from a tsunami.

Toward the middle of 2014, Yvette called out Madelyne Pryor, when the teenager made a number of disparaging remarks about a Red-X fundraiser and against Hope, who had been assisting the committee which had planned the event. While Maddie apologised, Yvette was still unhappy, her sense of right and wrong leading her to point out to Maddie that it wasn't Yvette she needed to apologise to. This, and an uncharacteristically steamy scene with Fred in the kitchen, revealed just how far Yvette had come in the last few years.

The End

Following a harrowing X-Men mission during which she was forced to dig deep and regress partly into her mutate persona and during which Fred was severely injured and almost died, Yvette withdrew into herself again. She began to doubt her ability to maintain control of herself, and while she still had no idea of what she had done in Genosha, she began to have suspicions. Fred's abrupt departure to care for his seriously-ill uncle was almost too much for her to deal with.

Yvette again lost control of her mutate 'self' during the attack on Muir Island, after witnessing the death of long-time friend Catseye at the hands of Sabretooth. In a blind feral rage, she killed Katu, before Senyaka in turn killed her.

Physical Characteristics

Height: 5' 0"

Weight: 140 lbs.

Eyes: Glowing electric blue, no pupils or irises

Hair: Dark red

Other Features: Yvette is a rather small, slight girl. Before her powers surfaced she was a pretty girl with long dark brown hair, brown eyes and a slightly elfin face. Now, her skin is a dark red in hue, so dense it seems to absorb light so she appears constantly shadowed. Her hands, feet and hair all end in long sharp spikes - the last joints of her fingers and toes are elongated and very dense and sharp, forming talons. She also has trouble maintaining an upright posture and tends to drop into a crouching position. When stressed or anxious, her skin hardens further, to the point she cannot walk upright and is unable to display facial expressions.

Powers

Yvette's powers are potentially to have control of her body on a molecular level. There are some limitations -- her body has to stay the same basic shape (re: the fact that her "claws" are still finger-shaped as opposed to fusing into one big knife), but within that limitation she can adapt the specifics pretty much any way she wants. Key word here is "potentially." At the time she was discovered, she pretty much only had the sharp, super-dense skin and spiky hair, hands and feet and the trauma associated with her powers will mean she has immense difficulty learning to control them. Eventually she'll be able to change the density of specific parts of her body (such as making 'armour' or turning her hands/feet into weapons) and effect small physical repairs but not for many years yet. Her powers also mean she weighs considerably more than her size would suggest.

Since Genosha, she grained a greater control of the extremes of her powers. With concentration, she can 'relax' her powers to the point she is able to touch others (although her skin feels rough and hard) and, to the other extreme, she can create a "battle form", with sharp edges and jags which both act as armour and as weapons. She is not entirely comfortable with the latter, especially as it tends to startle those who knew her as a mutate, being a smaller version.

Equipment

Various suits of self-repairing material invented by Forge that allow her to interact with her environment without damaging things or people. For her X-Men uniform, a pair of goggles designed by Hank to protect her eyes from bright lights.

Trivia

Marius and Jennie refer to Yvette as "Penny", having been told that was her name by the slavers who sold her. It is based on the Albanian word "Pendim", meaning Penance.

Apples are Yvette's favourite food and she frequently leaves them for people who she wants to connect to.

Due to the thickness of her skin, Yvette cannot sweat and must be careful of over-heating in summer. She also cannot swim, as her weight and density means she sinks rather than floats.