In a world torn between heroes and villains, it can be a dangerous and hostile place. Some take comfort in the Gifted that stand up against those who would use their powers for greed and chaos. While others choose to hide away, fearful of the day...
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Elaina smirked as she watched Cat drop his glass of wine, his face draining of color as a man rushed to his side. She knew the dutiful guard to be the loyal assistant of the robotics tycoon, Dominic Cramer. The man Cat had called Walt.
She knew this because, back on that fateful night in November, she had spent an agonizingly long time holding up appearances while the meddlesome aide took an hour clearing her home of all evidence that Catalyst had ever been there.
In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn't have been that hard. She just needed to maintain a dead body. No movement, no sounds, no change. However, she had been out of practice or really, she'd been almost completely inexperienced all together. She'd been living in near isolation ever since she ran away from home around the age of sixteen. However, prior to her escape, she had spent every waking minute doing all she could to maintain control over her unwieldy power. Not that she ever harnessed it, but she had at least learned from the experience. She knew her emotions emboldened her gift, that it affected those around her, and that, given the right concentration and motivation, she could conjure up a mirage that felt and looked as real as reality itself.
However, as a teenager, her goal was to minimize the time she subjected anyone to that illusive state, not prolong it. When she tricked Cat into thinking he'd brutally murdered her and that he hadn't just thrown his dagger at her countertop, she figured he'd pass out from exhaustion soon after and she could give up the charade. What she hadn't counted on was his loyal servant being parked somewhere in the woods, waiting just outside her door. Instead of being able to cry out her feelings before tying a passed-out Cat to a chair or something, she had to hold up her guard and maintain the illusion of her limp body lying on the floor with a pool of blood expanding from her throat.
After a while, her anger and sadness around Cat's betrayal diminished. Boredom and fatigue took its place, and her hold flickered. Thankfully, Walt kept his eyes away from the solemn corner and instead focused on his task at hand, which was moving all the armor out of the house and wiping the place clean to ensure no trace of his rich and powerful employer remained.
It meant her house got a free cleaning, which provided some motivation to hold the illusion steady, particularly when he got close to her shadow clone. He, however, had no desire to disturb the body, which meant she wouldn't have to guess what kind of footprint he'd leave in the blood. All he wanted was to retrieve the dagger and leave the rest as it was. Unfortunately, the real dagger was blanketed beneath her fake corpse while the bloodied weapon was nowhere to be seen because she hadn't bothered to calculate where Cat might have thrown it.
Once it became apparent that Walt would not leave until he found the last, crucial piece of evidence, Elaina steeled herself for one final desperate push and conjured up an imaginary dagger cast against her wall and hidden behind a cabinet. After Walt muttered some complaints about having checked that spot several times, the weary Gifted had to trick his mind into feeling the weight of the knife in his hand before he slid it into a plastic bag. To Elaina's great fortune, he then shoved the bag into a satchel, which also housed all the dirtied rags he used to clear the home of their presence.
