NAME: Spencer Jill Hastings
ALIAS: Vestige
AFFILIATION: Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters
FAMILY: all estranged
Mother: Veronica Hastings - (D) Senator of Pennsylvania
Older sister: Melissa Hastings - five years Spencer’s senior
ABILITIES: Psychometry, resistance, channeling
They say the only difference in PARTIES is how s u b t l e you are with your hate. Before, she might have believed they were better, that registering mutants was only SAFE. Precautious. Her mother ran on a platform of “acceptance,” with just a few r e q u i r e m e n t s . Ways to TRACK them, keep them separate but e q u a l . And Spencer believed it was good; that it was merely n e c e s s i t y , to keep people SAFE - but she did not see them as p e o p l e .
Maybe it’s karma, or maybe it’s just f a i r , because it’s not until she’s off at college that she starts to realize something isn’t - right. Or her PERCEPTION isn’t. She’s always needed to know, because knowledge is p o w e r , but now everything she touches is suddenly in her mind and at her fingertips. Its facts, its history, e v e r y o n e who has held it - and where. At first, the thoughts are overwhelming, and she struggles to keep up with classes - but research has always been her forte, and so, she finds the school.
Tells her parents she’s transferring, from UPenn to Columbia, and makes her way to the Xavier Institute to diagnose herself. Always with a need to be THE BEST, she begins to excel in her powers, moving on from the inanimate to greater distances . . to p e o p l e . Discovers when she focuses, with enough proximity, she can give and take shards of e m o t i o n . Of thought.
Every day in training exposes something new, a resistance she has A L W A Y S possessed. Can withstand the abilities of others, a mental BLOCK or steel skin. Not forever, though - not without EFFORT. So she channels them as well - turns psychic powers where she w a n t s them, redirects lasers, and cuts off t e l e p o r t a t i o n .