I plan to make a legitimate doc about this stuff at some point, but to state things simply until then, I’m gonna riff real quick.
The world Sarai lives in is a near future Earth in which mutants are an every day thing. How they regarded, however, is not the best. Mutant-human relations vary across the world, but they existed as something of a publicly known secret in the US until about the 1960s when the government realized they could be exploited on a grand scale. Prior to this, the exploitation of mutants by the government has been hush hush.
These days, those who sign up to “serve the country” are regarded better than their oh so unpatriotic counter parts. Mutant hero programs (I really need to come up with proper names and titles for these things, it has been years) function similarly to signing up for the military. It isn’t uncommon for kids in low income communities to see recruits sniffing around to see if they have any useful powers. Some youths may find themselves in which they are forced to choose between an unfair sentence of mutant jail over a petty crime or enlisting in a program.
What these programs do is train superheroes and assign them to different regions around the country. If this sounds at all familiar to a certain series, I assure you that: 1) this isn’t a ground breaking concept, 2) It’s something I’ve had for several years now, and 3) I ain’t even watch that series until last year after I got browbeat into it and while it was a hot ass mess, it did have some #concepts that I chose to integrate just a little. ;)
Sarai’s what you would call one of the country’s first couple of legacy heroes! Her dad, a fellow heliokinetic, did this whole thing before she did. He’s long retired now, but he signed up for it because he thought it would be a great way to better humanize Black mutants. He made himself out to be the most charismatic superhero out there. He’s also really, really powerful and one of the highest classes of mutants. So, naturally, when Sarai was born, she was highly sought after to follow in his footsteps.
Unfortunately for ye olde government, it was something she had zero interest in. But after a fun little situation in which she accidentally supernova’d in a Trader Joe’s upon encountering her ex-bestie who murdered her (more on that another time), she lost herself. The FBI agent watching her through her laptop went “WE GOT HER, BOYS” and her fate was sealed because her options were superheroing across the eastern seaboard and mutant jail. She was not going to be separated from her son. She hates every bit of it because most of what she does is scoop kids who need a second chance rather than drafting and make public appearances.
If you read this whole post, congrats, here’s some links to some really neat videos to get an idea of what the technology on her Earth is like! 1. 2.