Matilda Branson

Hall Of Fame!

Survival - 9 Wins!

Brutal - 2 Fatalities

AFFILIATION

Alignment: Hero

Team: Sentinels

VITAL STATS

Strength: Weak

Agility: Weak

Mind: Weak

Body: Standard

RECORD

Personal Wins: 9

Personal Losses: 3

Ren

The birds never came around to sing anymore. They used to, whenever she had a treat for them they'd come and sing a little song for her at her apartment balcony. They'd twitter away and give her that moment of fleeting happiness that rarely came anymore. But they had stopped coming. No bluebirds, no doves, no chickadees, not even pigeons wanted to come around anymore. She looked guiltily at the pile of feathered carcasses outside her balcony door. They would chirp until they were grabbed up and ripped to shreds, and they would look so frightened because they never knew what it was. Sometimes they were hands. Sometimes they were claws. Maybe they were something else entirely. But they did things, mean things to anything that did as much as live. She couldn't do anything about them. There was a tapping outside that was loud enough to make her look up from her glass of water. She didn't want to go out to get anything to eat so she just had a glass of water for breakfast every morning unless she had leftovers from last night's delivery. A bird had landed outside on the balcony railing. She sat and stared at it for a few seconds. It began to chirp as it looked down at the pile of blood and feathers on the surface below. She looked down at her water again before something with a squat stature and vomit-yellow skin rushed out of her bedroom and dove through the sliding balcony door. She didn't see much of it before it went through the glass, except it had a short tail and a small two-elbowed arm where its left eye should've been and many teeth coming out of its jagged-looking snout. And it had wooden legs. They clunked against the floor with every step. It ran and smashed through the window and the pigeon tried to fly away but it wasn't fast enough. The poor bird was grabbed in a pair of clawed hands and the two of them went falling down to the concrete far beneath her balcony. She winced as the glass shattered. She'd have to get that replaced. Poor bird. Should've known better. After finishing her glass of water she went back into her bedroom and began to change into the best clothes she had - a white blouse, a long drab skirt, and her good pair of shoes. She would need to look somewhat decent today. Today was the day she went in and asked for a raise. She didn't want to go out, didn't want to be around all those people. The idea scared her so much that she had convinced her boss to give her a home job because she was terrified and worried about it all at the same time. She needed it before she dragged herself into debt, what with the car payments (not that she used it often but it was handy to have) and ordering delivery almost every night and the rent on her apartment. That and she needed to get those prescriptions that didn't work. The doctors had given her pills upon pills to help her deal with her conditions, but none of them worked. They just made her feel sick all the time so she had stopped taking them after the second year, though she still had to buy them or they'd get worried and bring her in again. Nothing could treat all the various phobias and other indeterminable things she had. She glanced at the clock over her refrigerator. 9:47. And then she looked at the stopwatch she always left on the dinner table. 14:23:49. It would be best if she got to the office before noon, that way she could get back home long before the stopwatch reached zero. Then there was the matter of road conditions, though the weather just looked the slightest bit drizzly. She hoped there were no accidents on the way.

A traffic jam. She hated traffic jams. They made everything go so slowly. She might as well just get out and walk. It took too long, gave her too much time. When she had time, she began to think. Thinking made her remember. She couldn't remember, didn't want to remember. Not any of the things she had done when she had been stripped of all the things that had made her a good little girl. She switched on her radio and turned up the volume, fiddled with her rearview mirror, shuffled through her glove compartment. Nothing. She sat there and just breathed so she could completely clear her mind. She sat in her car with her hands on the wheel and her feet on the pedals and the radio off. Then she began to sob. She tried to stop it for the first few seconds, only allowing the tears to come through first, but that never worked because she always felt so sad and it had to happen at least once a day anyways. Her cries weren't heard over the other radios in the other cars and the tears began to sting at her cheeks. She shook with her sob-racked body and let herself go limp with everything but her hands. She closed her eyes and stared down at her knees, slowly banging her head against the steering wheel and tightening her grip. And then she stopped crying. She stopped trembling and stopped hitting her head and looked up again like it had never happened. She didn't wipe the tears away and her eyes didn't stop tearing either. There was a child in the car ahead of her. He might've been around twelve and was looking at her as if he was concerned. Or frightened. She sniffled, waved at the boy, and smiled gently. Maybe if she pretended she wasn't afraid they wouldn't come. He had this strange pout on his face before slowly turning around and facing forward again. It took a few minutes for the jam to clear up. The boy hadn't looked back at her again.

teraphobia

     Weapons Creation: Supreme

  • Ranged Attack Only
  • Ranged and Melee Attack

 

It had begun to rain lightly. The sky was completely blocked out by depressing gray rainclouds. The right windshield wiper on her car didn't work, and she had neglected to get it fixed because she didn't want to go out and she never had any passengers anyways. It was such a dreary day. She supposed it was fitting, considering someone always had to die when she went outside and it would be horrible for someone to die violently on a beautiful day. She stopped at a walkway. A male crossing guard had halted traffic to let across a bunch of second graders. Some of them had umbrellas. She felt a nagging sensation and pulled the stopwatch out of her pocket again. 12:39:32. Plenty of time. She caught a motion out of the corner of her eye. She ignored it at first, and then it stepped directly into her line of sight. It was a man wearing a cheesy cowboy getup - sky blue button-up shirt with leather tassels lining the pockets, faded blue jeans underneath black leather stirrups, cowboy boots, and a brick red hat with a string that went around the chin. It walked strangely, limping almost, because one leg was about a foot shorter than the other. It also had three-and-a-half arms, the spare arm sticking out of its right armpit and the half from the elbow up jutting through its stomach. All four hands held guns. A permanent wide toothy grin was frozen on its face like it was made of polished wood. Its eyes were just little black dots on its forehead. It was smiling at the crossing guard and slowly walking up to with all the guns drawn. Oh God not again. She felt the fear crawling up in her and all the muscles in her jaw loosen. But she couldn't be petrified. She had to warn him, had to stop him from being murdered out in broad daylight like all the others. She grasped frantically at the door latch, but it was jammed so she started to bang against her window with an open palm and scream out, trying to tell him to run away. Then the bullets began to fly. Two, five, eight, nine, twelve. The crossing guard fell down and all of the screaming children scattered and none of them saw or heard what had done it except for her and she had been too late. The four-armed cowboy with the guns and the grin was gone now, had walked on its merry way. Now all she could do was feel ashamed, continue on her way, and hope the police wouldn't track her down for questioning.

 

Paraisthiphobia

     Illusion Creation: Supreme

  • Auto-Hit Attack

 

She was at the office now. It had taken awhile to get past the front desk and she didn't want to take the elevator because she might have to take it with other people but she was where she wanted to be now - the working space of the SLJ Headquarters, where most of the paperwork was written up, filed, and kept. That's what she did, organize records from her home computer. She hadn't wanted to come and had tried to call about a raise, but her boss insisted that she come by and ask for it in person. Now she was trying to keep her breathing rhythmic as she sat on one of the seats outside Mr. Arnold's door. Breathing evenly was supposed to keep her relaxed, a doctor had said. She had seen a tall greasy-haired womanish figure following one of the interns into the bathroom, trying to wrap a choke-wire around his neck, when Mr. Harvey the secretary had told her to take a seat. She tried to stop shaking. Mr. Harvey noticed and jokingly said that Mr. Arnold seemed to have that effect on people. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the quiet strangled gurgling sounds that would eventually be followed by cries of confusion and panic when someone discovered the body. Ignoring things seemed to work better. There was some shuffling within Mr. Arnold's office. Mr. Harvey didn't care. She wasn't able to control her trembling for a few seconds. A few more seconds of shuffling were heard within and the door opened, allowing one of the other interns to leave while buttoning up her blouse. There was a call from inside. "Come in." She did as told, just in time to see Mr. Arnold adjusting his tie and repositioning himself in his tall expensive leather chair. "Ah, Ms. Branson. Take a seat." Already he had changed modes, from sweet-talker to strictly business. She did as she was told again, apprehensively getting in the smaller of the two chairs sitting across from his desk. As she sat down, her head dipped for just a second, taking her eyes away from the man behind the desk. A pen rolled off his desk and fell to the floor. When she was seated, she raised her head for a glance at him for just a second before returning to her usual routine of anxiously avoiding eye contact and shifting in her seat. And then she was terrified and trying to sink into her chair, stiffly grasping at the arms so she didn't fall in. It stood behind him - a court jester in red and black with a frilly white coif around its neck and an eternal impossible smile on its white-painted face and an ivory scythe in its gloved hands. She began to silently choke on her own cries, tried to bury her head in the backrest. The jester prepared to take a giant swing that would lop his head off. Mr. Arnold bent down to get the fallen pen after searching the floor. The scythe swished over the back of his neck and the jester span to the floor with the power of the swing. Mr. Arnold sat back up as the jester got to its feet, corners of its mouth looking like they were slowly turning down. Her arms flailed stiffly as she tried to gain the wit to point at it, the left side of her face pushed into the seat. Mr. Arnold frowned slightly. "Something wrong, Ms. Branson?" The jester behind him raised its scythe over its head, anxiously wanting to slice Mr. Arnold's head in half. He turned his seat to a side and stood up just as the jester took its downswing. The tip buried itself into a mound of papers, barely nicking the desk itself. Mr. Arnold stepped up close to examine her. "Hey, are you okay?" The jester had raised its scythe again, had it over its head again. She was terrified now, barely managed to crawl her way out of the seat and drop to the floor before the scythe's tip buried itself into Mr. Arnold's shoulder. He screamed. She screamed. It chuckled through its clenched grinning teeth. The scythe was pulled strongly from his shoulder, nearly ripping the rest of his arm off. He turned around to see what had happened and was surprised when he saw nothing. The jester pulled back again and gave a mighty swing as she stumbled out the door past Mr. Harvey, checking to see what was the matter, and curled into a ball on the floor before going into another crying fit. Mr. Harvey dropped backward and scuttled away from the office as Mr. Arnold's head popped clean off his neck.

 

Enochlophobia

     Mind Control: Supreme

 

Today hadn't gone nearly the way she had wanted it to. No raise, no way to buy her medication, no way to keep them from coming over to her apartment and bringing her to an institution and lock her up. She might have to sell her car to buy them just so she could drop them in her sink drain one by one. All in all, it had been a fairly unsettling morning. The police had come in to investigate. Mr. Harvey refused to let her go because he thought she was a witness to a murder and that she would be wanted for questioning. They had kept her for hours so they could listen to her lies because if she told them what had happened they'd never believe her. They'd kept her for too long. Too little time now. She knew. She checked her stopwatch. 2:54:26. Oh God the ride to the SLJ Documentation Facility had taken somewhere over two hours, the wait had taken a little under an hour, the murder had taken some ten minutes, and they had kept her for questioning for nine hours. They didn't want anyone to leave until they'd questioned everybody about Mr. Arnold and the strangled intern in the bathroom. She needed to get home now before time ran out. She was fumbling with her keys when she saw it. It was some man in a ragged business suit holding a stick sharpened at one end and standing on stilts. Either stilts or his legs below the knees were very long. He was hobbling towards a mother and the child toddling at her side. The screams caught in her throat and she began to run. She could move faster than the man on stilts but it was closer to them than she was. She ran across the street and barely avoided getting hit by the oncoming traffic as it raised the stick up and jabbed it down through the top of the mother's skull. The boy heard a sound that went *splurch* and felt his mother's grip loosen but when he looked up to see what was the matter he only saw her slacked jaw and the blood beginning to drip down from her head. She had gotten there and scooped up the child and began to run away before the stilt-man had time to take his spike out from the mother's head. She had to run away, she didn't want anybody to die. She had to at least try and stop them from killing anybody. The boy in her arms was puzzled and began to ask questions. "Where's mommy? Where're we going?" But she didn't answer. She ran for as long as she could because she knew there were people chasing her and thinking she was kidnapping, and when she finally couldn't run anymore she hobbled into a dark alley. She hid behind a dumpster and rocked back and forth on her knees with the child in her arms and cried loudly into his shoulder. She tried to tell him that everything was going to be okay and that no one was going to hurt him but she couldn't because she was crying too hard. She began to scream when she felt the fingers prying at her, the concerned voices telling her to let go. She didn't have any energy left and they pried him away from her within a few seconds. She tried to scream out "But they'll kill you all!" but it came out broken and garbled and unintelligible. She couldn't see how many people there were through the tears, but they all turned and walked away because they were more concerned with the child that had been kidnapped from the mother that had just been murdered and they didn't know it. They didn't know, they didn't care about her. It was a fact of her life that no one cared, and if by chance someone did they would stop soon or she would convince them that she was alright. She didn't want to be around people. When people were around her they'd get killed by things they couldn't see but she could see too well for her own health. She began to bawl, letting everything fall out. She wasn't even diverted from her fit when a man stepped out from a doorway. He looked ragged and smelled of alcohol and walked every step like he was going to fall down. But he was real. He was smiling with blackened rotting teeth and the stench of whiskey wafting around him and his words slurred by his drunkenness. "You've got a pretty mouth."

 

Isolophobia

     Matter Animation: Supreme

  • Ranged Attack Only
  • Area Affect
  • Target Seeker
  • Multi-Attacks
  • Ranged and Melee Attack

 

Such a change of pace this was. Just a couple of hours ago she had been rocking back and forth and crying to herself because she couldn't even save a child's life right. Now she had her panties around her ankles and was crying to herself because she was being taken advantage of in a time of weakness. Who was she kidding? She was always weak. And now she was paying for it. The drunken man had dragged her to a foul abandoned apartment building nearby that was as clean as he was and smelling worse, fondling and pawing her nearly every step of the way, thrown her into a bathroom, locked it from the outside for awhile, and then came to take her out after 'cleaning himself up'. His snoring had been loud even from some stories up. There was no point in banging on the walls and trying to knock the door down. She just sat on the broken toilet, tried not to cry, and waited. She had checked the stopwatch again when she heard him fumbling with the door lock. 00:14:05. No. No no no. Not good. Not good at all. Why couldn't he have waited just for a little longer, why didn't he just leave her alone, why why why? Why now? He had come to the door completely naked. She had tried to sink into the bathtub. He dragged her into a room with peeling and fading hot pink wallpaper barely visible beneath the rotting centerfolds and magazine clippings. There was a decent mattress on a rotting bed frame. He didn't feel like violating her on the floor. She screamed and swatted and clawed and hit him, but she was weak and cut her fingernails every day. How miserable she was. How dirty she felt. How she wanted to be pitied and held and told that everything was going to be okay and that no one was going to hurt her. But it wasn't going to happen. Nobody cared that much. The doctors had tried to help her after she left the place her guardians wanted her to call home, but all they succeeded in doing was drying up her wallet. The psychologists just got fed up with her and referred her to someone else until she was sent in circles and it became a waste of time. She had no more tears left to cry. She didn't want to cry anymore. But she wanted to laugh for some reason though. Maybe because she had spent so much time crying her mind decided on doing something else. The drunkard raised himself off of her for just a second to look her over and grin. Then he stopped grinning and tried to scream but choked on his own blood. Four holes had been stabbed through his chest and stomach. Then one went through his neck. He fell dead on her, bleeding and twitching slightly. She didn't panic, just gently crawling out from under him to the middle of the rotting floor and staring at him from there, quietly rocking back and forth in her dirty, sullied, bloodied clothes and forgetting that her underwear was still around her ankles for just a moment. She had gotten used to the death by now. After five years of it, that was all someone could do. It was the hallucinations that really scared her. God no. She had gotten used to it? Used to the blood and pain? No. She shook her head to nobody. He had it coming anyway. She screamed and clutched at her head. No. She couldn't do this again. She couldn't turn back to the cold. A name rung in her head. She wanted to bang her head on the floor until it stopped and she wasn't having these evil dirty thoughts anymore. The stopwatch in her pocket had been beeping. She hadn't noticed it before and took it out of her pocket. 00:00:47. It had been set to give a minute-early warning before hitting zero. She shut her eyes as the watch counted down. She wanted to go home.

 

Thanatophobia

     Closed Mind: Standard

 

One jumpy and erratic thought was in her mind as the clock counted down. 00:00:04. Every 127 hours. 00:00:03. Why was the number 127 important, anyways? 00:00:02. It couldn't be how many people had been killed that day when it had all really started. 00:00:01. Maybe it was how long...? 00:00:00. She shut her eyes and tried to brace herself, instead shaking in misery and letting little gasping sounds escape from her mouth. Skittering noises like claws scraping against wood pervaded her hearing. And then things began to brush by her, wispy things that had the feathery feel of shadow if shadow ever had a texture. It felt cold. And then there was the giggling, that frightful giggling that was so out-of-place here. The laughter of children that echoed in her head because she had heard it so many times before. And that wasn't even what she was afraid of the most. It was what coming next. So she waited and waited and heard nothing more. Her eyes opened. There wasn't a single person within the building other than the man that had just died. Not a sound to be heard though that changed soon enough. There was a clicking of shoes against the floor. The pace was light and even and steady and it was slowly walking her way from the hallway outside. Through the door walked a little girl who was no more than seven and glowing brilliantly like a big candle flame. Her face was blank and surrounded by long brown hair. Every 127 hours, the only recurring one. Her mouth began to move, the voice ensuing awash with coldness and echoing with hundreds of pained and miserable voices of those who had died. "Time to go, Matilda." No. No no no, she didn't want to go. She never wanted to go. She already knew where she'd be going. Her eyes shut tight and her head began to swing back and forth, pitifully begging, pleading "...no, no, please...." A small hand clasped around hers, began to tug at her, the voice emerging from coldness and into a kinder tone with only a hint of urgency. "It's time to go." She already knew what she was trying to get her to do, already knew what was waiting for her. Only with reluctance did she haltingly get to her feet. "Come on." The child led her to a chair standing in the center of the room where there hadn't been there before. "Get up." She didn't say anything, just giving a whimper in response. "Get up." So she did, slowly putting one foot on the chair and then following with the other as the child held her hand. Her eyes were closed again. There was something lightly brushing against her face and she already knew what it was. "Stop being so scared." The girl was talking right into her ear. Her eyes fluttered open for just a second, long enough to see a vibrant little pair of hands reach for the noose dangling in front of her face. The noose. The girl put it over her head, looped it around her neck and under her chin. No. "You can do it, Matilda." They sounded like they should be spoken with a mocking tone but they weren't. It was just honesty, the pure loving honesty of a once-pure child that used to do nothing but pick daises and be loved by her parents. Daises were her favorite. "I believe in you." How badly she missed her parents. She was simply standing there now, without even wanting to move. "Don't worry. It'll only take a few seconds, and it'll hurt a little, but then the pain'll be all gone." She wanted to curl up into a ball again and forget the world existed but she couldn't because if she tried the noose would snap tight and dangle her feet right above the floor. Her eyes shut tight because she didn't want to cry. Her mouth shut tight because she didn't want to scream. Slowly and stiffly she shook her head. No. Never. Won't jump. Too afraid to jump. She knew the child was smiling. "You can do nearly anything if you set your mind to it." But she still refused, still shaking her head in between the sobs that forced their way out of her throat. The child sighed in disappointment, just like every other time. "Fine." She only heard light footstep slowly and evenly walking away. Not until the footsteps faded did she open her eyes. She had forgotten to breathe. And that her hands weren't bound. Her fingers shakily made their way to the noose and took it off. The corpse of the drunkard wasn't looking at her, was lying on its stomach and its face was staring at the wall. Good. She never wanted anybody to see her like this. Her stopwatch had stopped beeping. It was set to automatically reset every 127 hours. She stood there, sniveling and sniffling and feeling the way she felt every time she came but worse. She'd only been away from her apartment building a few times when she came before. Her clothes were soiled. And her panties were still around her ankles. She pulled them up before getting off the chair. She glanced at the body for a moment before taking a mildewed blanket from underneath the rotting bedframe and covering his body. Without a cry or whimper or scream, she slowly shuffled away from the bed, into the hallway, and eventually going back outside. It was dark, probably past curfew. No one else should be outside. She'd be alone again. Her car was still in the Documentation Division parking lot. She ran all the way just to be safe.