Siryn

"Modicum of respect? Is that a euphemism for sycophancy, Da?"

- Theresa Rourke-Cassidy

History
Theresa's family life was complicated even before she was born. Her mother, Maeve Rourke, was torn between two men, cousins Sean and Tom Cassidy. Although she eventually chose to marry Sean, Tom continued to love and have a close relationship with her. Sean eventually took a job with Interpol in order to support his family. He left on a months'-long undercover mission, unaware that Maeve was pregnant at the time. During this time, Maeve kept up her close relationship with Tom as they both were living at Cassidy Keep. Shortly after Theresa was born, Maeve was killed in an IRA bombing, leaving her in the sole (and supposedly temporary) care of Tom. However, when Sean returned home, he was so upset at the loss of Maeve, and Tom's apparent failure to protect her, that he lashed out at Tom before promptly leaving, unaware of his daughter's existence.

Tom took sole custody of Theresa, raising her primarily at Cassidy Keep (as Sean seemed unlikely to return). He chose to raise her as if he had officially adopted her, with quite a bit of help from the Cassidys' butler Eamon. Despite quite a few other members of the Cassidy clan also living on and off at the Keep, Theresa was most unaware of who her real parents were. However, Tom also started to embark on a criminal career, devastate by Maeve's death and angry at Sean. To keep Theresa blissfully unaware of his criminal leanings, Tom sent her to boarding school in London starting at age 10. Theresa started to feel increasingly lonely and trapped in this unfamiliar place and, by 13, had turned to alcohol and partying for comfort (although, it was nothing on the level it would be later in her life).

At 14, Theresa's powers first started to emerge. However, fearing the implications of these powers, Theresa kept them hidden from her friends and family. During this time, she became increasingly more withdrawn from people, though more likely to turn to alcohol and partying. Despite this, however, she managed to scrape by in school and graduate with fairly decent grades.

It was shortly after graduation, however, that Theresa's life really hit the fan. Sean returned to Cassidy Keep as his (and Tom's) grandmother was dying. Shortly after the funeral, a whole onslaught of Cassidy family secrets came out. Most importantly, for Theresa, it was revealed to her that Sean was her father and Tom was a career criminal. Additionally, Theresa's powers came out, as did Sean's and Tom's status as mutants. Theresa didn't take the news well and decided to leave her family's ancestral home for the United States to distance herself.

Theresa did not cut ties with her family immediately, instead using their money to briefly attend college in New York City. However, she eventually quit school and, when she did, she cut all her ties with her family in order to make it on her own. She spent a brief time as a pickpocket in the city, but proved to be wholly inept and eventually gave up. Eventually, she signed up with a temp agency, doing various odd jobs in order to support herself. During this time, she made only minimal efforts to conceal her mutation.

Theresa's few efforts to conceal her mutation eventually caught the attention of Madrox at X-Factor Investigations. (Her resume as a paper-filer from all the temp work didn't hurt, either.) With X-Factor, Theresa started to turn her life around and become much more focused on she wanted with life. However, when the Registration Act with through, Theresa once again found herself unsure of her place, though she is staying with X-Factor for the foreseeable future.

Personality
Since cutting her ties with her family, Theresa has become increasing "lost" in her life. Up until recently, she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life, though she is quite content with X-Factor for now. (Well, as content as someone who has been marked and put behind walls can be.) However, she still has some major internal battles that she has more or less resolved by ignoring them for the time being. One of her biggest battles has been with her alcoholism, which she has battled with mixed success. She did actually have a few months of sobriety under her belt before the Registration Act, but has fallen off the wagon since. Despite her attempts to reconcile her issues, Theresa is still unwilling to talk to any member of her family.

For the most part, Theresa does not let on about her internal battles to the outside world. She comes across to most people as something of an extrovert--a genuinely happy, friendly, and confident person. And, though it's more of a front, it's not a wholly inaccurate front. Most of her problems, for instance, do actually come from her feelings of loneliness. Theresa does like being around people, and so is generally happy and friendly (and something of a flirt) in order to force people to want to be around her. Equally, Theresa is more or less confident in the parts of herself she can define. Generally, however, Theresa tends to lean more towards being outright stubborn than a nice person.

Likes

 * Noise
 * Alcohol
 * Big Cities
 * Driving Fast
 * Chinese Take-Out

Dislikes

 * Hospital Smells
 * Her Family
 * Silence
 * Being Alone
 * AA Meetings

Skills

 * Education: Although Theresa did not continue her education into college/university, she did receive a fairly comprehensive if basic education at boarding school.
 * Language: Theresa learned Latin and French in school, and Irish Gaelic at the Keep. However, as she speaks primarily English, she is sorely out-of-practice with the spoken word and does better with the translating the written languages.
 * Combat: Theresa learned how to fence at school (which rarely comes in handy). She has also taken several self-defense classes and is quite apt at the more unconventional street fighting.
 * Paperwork: Theresa's temp jobs have lead to her becoming fairly accomplished at quickly filing paperwork, as well as burying things in it, and finding things that were buried in it. (This is an invaluable, though underrated, skill.)

Powers
Theresa uses her vocal chords to generate hypersonic screams. These screams can produce a wide variety of effects. Most commonly, Theresa's scream is noted to shatter, liquefy, or disintegrate solid matter, and to cause hearing loss and/or dizziness, nausea, and unconsciousness in humans. The screams can also be used to repel objects from her, which also produces an effect like flight. She can also use her screams to scramble wavelength probes and map out locations using sonar, though she's more unlikely to use either of these abilities. Recently, Theresa found that she can also use her powers, at admittedly softer levels, to hypnotically entrance people to get them to comply with her wishes or outright adore her.

To compensate for her powers, Theresa has super-human hearing which allows her to hear over the sounds of her screaming (although, whether anyone else can is questionable). She also has a resistance to intense sounds, primarily so she doesn't break her own eardrums.

=Weaknesses= Theresa's main weakness is, of course, her vocal chords. If anything happens (from smaller things like a cold to more violent malicious intent) Theresa is rendered with greatly reduced powers, or no powers at all. An additional flaw in her powers, Theresa has no real sort of invulnerability factor: she can survive some of the friction of flying, but can't be hit when she's going that fast at the risk of broken bones or more devastating damage. Each scream of Theresa's can last only a minute at best, and more realistically only a handful of seconds at a time, since it requires her temporarily not breathing. Additionally, she can only scream a couple of times in quick succession (five at most). Of course, when she's not flying, she's as vulnerable as a normal human. The quickest way to push her buttons, and force her to lose her common sense and composure, is to bring up her family.