James Cummings
OOC
| Game | Journal | Portrayed By |
|---|---|---|
| Invol | fira | Britt Robertson |
Basic Stats
Full Name: James Evan Cummings
Nickname(s): Jaycee
Gender: Female
Age: 16
Date of Birth: July 30, 1995
Zodiac: Leo
Sexuality: Straight
Relationship Status: Single
Hometown: Austin, TX (United States)
Room: 4C (roommate: Charlie Rabble)
Power: Pyrokinesis
Abilities: She can create, control, and absorb fire, and high temperatures don't bother her (always handy when you live in Texas); she's also immune to certain side effects of fires (smoke inhalation, for example, doesn't bother her, and she can't be burned by high temperatures or flames — she can still get sunburned, though, because that's nothing to do with flames or high temperatures). A lot of her power usage is involuntary and tied to high emotions, causing flare-ups of large amounts of fire. So far, if she's trying to create fire intentionally, she can usually only get a tiny bit of flame and only for a short while, but she has better control over pre-existing flames. She has yet to really try absorbing fire into herself. The whole power thing is still relatively new to her, and there wasn't much help to be had at home.
Family
Father: Evan Cummings (upper-level management at Intel; b. November 5, 1960)
Mother: Maureen Cummings (née Wilson; Mary Kay saleswoman; b. April 13, 1961)
History
High school sweethearts who married young and settled in the heart of the Texas hill country, Evan and Maureen Cummings desperately wanted children, but despite years of trying, they kept having trouble conceiving. By 1993, they had begun looking into in-vitro fertilization, and their attempts finally bore fruit in 1994, when an implantation finally took. Maureen held her breath the entire pregnancy, following her doctor's orders to the letter and not daring to do a single thing that might hurt her baby boy — she was so convinced that they were having a little boy that she refused to hear anything to the contrary, even refusing to find out the gender at a mid-pregnancy ultrasound. Imagine the Cummings' surprise when, come the end of July, 1995, the doctor announced "It's a girl!" Having expected a boy, Evan and Maureen had never discussed girl names, only boy names, so they decided (mostly on Maureen's part, and it's debatable whether you can blame the drugs for this decision) to just give their baby girl the name they were planning to give their baby boy: James Evan Cummings.
James grew up an only child: in-vitro cost too much for Evan and Maureen to continue trying, and they continued to be incapable of conceiving naturally. She didn't altogether mind not having siblings: she got her own room (which was repainted from nursery-for-a-boy-blue to her favorite shade of light purple when she was eight), she never had to worry about siblings breaking her toys or borrowing her clothes, and she didn't have to share her parents' attention with anyone else. Her childhood would have been rather sweet and easy, if not for the name she was saddled with: although there was a trend in the late 80s and 90s to start giving girls traditional boys' names, James was never among them and remained a very obvious "boy's name" which resulted in a lot of teasing from her classmates. From the second grade onward, James started trying to get people to refer to her by her self-chosen nickname of Jaycee (her initials, J. C., strung together), but while teachers accepted the nickname, her fellow students enjoyed the teasing possibility of "James" far too much to start using her nickname.
In a desperate attempt to shed all the "boyish" comments about herself, Jaycee tried to be as girly as she could manage: her wardrobe throughout childhood and into her teen years consisted mostly of skirts and dresses, and she let her mom (a Mary Kay saleswoman) turn her into her own best customer, always letting Maureen give her makeovers and buying makeup from her. By the time she started high school, Jaycee was pretty much an expert at applying makeup to herself and others, as well as giving herself manicures and pedicures. Her attempts to "girlify" herself helped a little with reducing the amount of teasing she got, by the time she got to high school. There was one girl (Laura Hayes), who had been in classes with her all the way from kindergarten, who just didn't like Jaycee and seemed to make it her mission to make Jaycee's life miserable, but most of the rest of her new classmates left her well enough alone. For the short duration of time she was in high school with them, anyway.
It turned out that, if not for Laura, Jaycee might not have found out that she was different, and not just for having a boy's name. Well, she still would have found out, it just might not have been quite so public and traumatizing for everyone involved. It was in the fall of her sophomore year of high school, and Jaycee was fifteen. After having run to hide in the girls' bathroom during lunch, she found herself face-to-face with Laura and her posse of followers, who wasted no time with picking on her. Jaycee's nerves were already frayed from Laura's earlier lunchroom attacks, and though she tried to just get out of the way and go on to her next class in peace, Laura and her cronies blocked Jaycee's way and shoved her around, teasing her mercilessly. Jaycee's temper flared up … and at the same time, so did Laura's hair, bursting into flames in front of Jaycee's eyes and all of her (Laura's) friends. It being 2010, everyone knew about Vols, after The Seattle Incident nearly three years prior. Jaycee was, of course, blamed for lighting Laura's head on fire (and thanks to her friends dunking her head in the toilet, she survived with only minor burns to her face, neck, and shoulders).
Jaycee was expelled from school for attacking a classmate and handed over to the FBI, despite her parents' protestations that it couldn't have been their daughter! She was completely normal, their baby, the school got it all wrong, the FBI had the wrong girl, etc etc. Jaycee, horrified at what had happened — and knowing, deep down, that it was indeed her who lit Laura on fire — went quietly. Unfortunately, she hadn't been aware of her power before that incident, and though they brought in other Vols to confirm that she was indeed one of them, she had trouble with deliberately using her powers, resulting in the government holding her for months, in part because of the danger she presented to others (it became clear very quickly that whenever she got mad or upset, things caught on fire) and in part because it was simply taking that long to determine the extent of her abilities.
Finally, in March of 2011, Jaycee was released from federal custody and returned home. Her parents, who had been so sure of their daughter's innocence and normalcy, were now wary around her, afraid that she would burn the house down around them. But they welcomed her back into their home, and kept things as quiet and undisruptive as possible, trying to keep Jaycee from getting upset. As they lived in a gated community, the amount their home was vandalized was limited (though people who didn't want "that freak" in their midst managed to find their ways to get to the house and make their feelings known), but Jaycee mostly kept to the house, afraid of venturing out — as much afraid of what the "normals" might do to her as she was of what might happen if she got too upset. Her mother, always trying to be helpful, suggested both yoga and meditation as ways for Jaycee to control her temper, even hiring personal trainers in each to come out to the house to try to teach her control, but she still got frustrated (and fire-create-y) if she didn't feel like she was grasping something quick enough, or if it was just too hard, resulting in the personal trainers both eventually quitting out of fear for their own lives.
It was only a couple months after her release from federal custody that the Boston Accord was announced, and Jaycee found herself relieved. Finally, somewhere for her to go where she could be surrounded by other people like her, where there would be people who could help her control her powers, so that she wouldn't have to be afraid of burning the house down if she had a bad dream. July 2012 simply couldn't come soon enough for Jaycee.
As the year passed, Jaycee grew to resent her power and wish desperately for normalcy — she would gladly go back to just being teased by Laura over her "boy name" in place of being feared for her powers. She still didn't know how to control them, and she spent half her time trying to do something to bring her powers under her control, and the other half of her time too scared of her powers to do anything about them. Her mother supplied her with scented candles for her bedroom, and those were her favorite things to experiment with: after she lit them the normal way (matches), she was actually able to do a tiny bit with the pre-existing flames, making them grow and shrink, making them move, but only ever a little bit. Trying to purposely create fire was still beyond her grasp. In early spring 2012, she finally managed to start creating (on purpose!) tiny bits of flame in her hand, but hardly more than what she would get from lighting a match.
Personality
Jaycee is something of a quiet girl, preferring to try to keep to herself whenever possible. Prior to discovering her powers, it was mostly to protect herself from those who were keen to tease and bully her. Since having discovered her powers, it has become a way to protect herself and others, by keeping herself sheltered away from those who might be hurt if she got upset (and keeping herself away from those who hate and fear what she is). Since being released from FBI custody, she has started to read a lot, mostly because she has nothing else to do. She'll read anything she can lay her hands on, regardless of genre. She only has a few books that she's actually bought, preferring to have her parents check books out of the library for her (the library wouldn't lend to her, for the same reason Jaycee doesn't spend much money on books for herself: books are very flammable items).
She's never been too good at making friends. She's friendly enough, and willing to trust anyone who's nice to her, but (partly from growing up an only child) she just doesn't know how to spend time just hanging out with other people, like what people talk about or do. She's very girly (years of practicing girliness to avoid "boyish" comments pretty much sunk in and became as much a part of her as her blonde hair), so she was (back before she discovered her powers) happy to go to the mall, or give makeovers, but beyond that, she just … doesn't know what people do or talk about when they hang out together.
She's also more than a bit temperamental. She tries to just hold all of her negative emotions in, but she's just not very good at it, and it explodes out of her when it's built up inside too much … and ever since the manifestation of her power, her emotion explodes out of her in the form of things around her catching fire. She's not had any luck in controlling her temper in the past, and she's doubtful that she'll have much luck with it in the future, really. She just can't help it: she bottles everything up inside until it explodes, she just doesn't know how to do any different.