Wilhelmina Basset NPC |
Portrayed By |
Emily Deschanel |
Age |
30 |
Gender |
Female |
Affiliation |
Xavier's School |
Race |
Mutant |
Open for Apps |
Yes |
Contact |
Ghost |
A gym teacher who never gets tired.
Biography
- Birthday: 8 December, 1980
- Position: Physical Education Instructor
- Fame: The whole not sleeping thing.
- Family: Military father and six younger brothers.
Wilhelmina Basset was born an army brat and was the beginning of a large family. Her mother ran off when she was ten, leaving her the oldest with six younger brothers: she learned early how to make herself heard, and more importantly, listened to. To keep her brothers in line, she learned to become a strict disciplinarian, taking cues from her father's military ways.
This helped put an emotional distance between her and her brothers, despite them all being stair-step children, each roughly one year apart (no wonder mom left!). There was also the fact that she was clearly her father's favourite. In his eyes, there was Little Mina, and there were 'the boys'. Interestingly, for all her tomboy ways, her father still tended to treat her more like a princess or a fragile china doll.
Despite this closeness with her father, who treated her more like an equal in the household, she was left to deal with puberty very much on her own. When she got her first period, her father told her, 'congratulations' and gave her twenty dollars. She's still not quite sure what that was for. When bras stopped being optional, she had to shoplift her first few, until her father clued in to what she was doing. At that point, he started giving her a generous clothing allowance and did not want to know details about what she bought with it.
For the most part, her brothers didn't seem to so much resent her special role in the house, though there was the occasional complaint about why she got her own room when the boys had to double or triple up in each house. Mostly, though, it just served to cement in their minds that she was different from them. Especially to the younger ones, she was more like a surrogate mother than a sister. With the family's constant moves making it hard to make friends outside the family, Mina found herself having to become very independent, trying her best to straddle the divide between a child's world and the adult one, not really a part of either.
However, she was, from a young age, a very athletic child, and this served to give her a focus in life. She enjoyed the competitive nature of sports, and would even begin getting into trouble for being too competitive in peewee leagues. Physical fitness also helped give her the upper hand in keeping her brothers in line.
Running, she discovered around her freshman year, was one sport she could integrate into fairly easily, despite moving from school to school throughout the year. She started off as a sprinter, but at a track meet in eleventh grade, one of their runners went down with a sprained ankle and, as she was an alternate, she went in for him in the longest run of the meet.
At first it was agony. She hadn't trained for this sort of thing. But her coach had told her just to do her best, and by God, at least try to finish. Wilhelmina was determined to do more than that. Gritting her teeth, she gave it all she had, and lo and behold, she was pulling ahead of the rest of the pack.
Of course, this was because the other long distance runners had learned to pace themselves. By the time she was entering her second lap, Mina thought she was going to die. And then, suddenly, it happened.
Her body just stopped being tired. Her muscles stopped screaming in agony. Her lungs no longer felt like they were going to burst. She won the race by a landslide and was barely even out of breath by that point.
Even with mutants making the news, it wasn't until Wilhelmina gave up sleeping that she began to suspect something might be wrong with her. At first, she simply figured it was insomnia. Except she didn't feel tired. After three sleepless nights in a row, she was still fresh as a daisy.
Although she did switch her focus to cross-country running now, she decided to keep her powers to herself. She didn't even tell her father or brothers. At night, she'd hole up in her room and read by flashlight. Her grades began to skyrocket because of all this extra attention, even though, with her father going overseas, she wound up sole caretaker of the boys for the better part of her senior year.
She got smart and learned how to fake being tired after running. She became careful to pace herself so that she always only just won by a nose. Still, she was good enough to attract the attention of the Ivy Leagues, between her grades and her athletics. When the time came, she chose Harvard because they offered the best scholarship.
She started courses at the school, picking mostly fairly general arts programs working towards major in English with a minor in public health. She even got her first boyfriend, a tortured artist-type named Ethan (though she'd been on a few dates in high school, between being a handful and moving constantly, nothing ever came of them). However, her main focus was on her running. Though, for her, training was more about learning how to be not so good.
And yet, it finally happened. She started winning a little too easily and a little too often. Suspicions of enhancement drugs began to circulate around her. Right before a big meet, a student paper published an article accusing her, and refused to revoke it unless she took a drug test. Even Ethan dumped her without any explanation.
It was all too much. Although she knew the drug test would come up clean, and her father was pushing her to hire a lawyer and sue for libel, she realized too much attention had been drawn to her by then. It was only a matter of time until accusations of steroid use turned to that dreaded M-word. So she dropped out.
She moved back home with her family for awhile, seeing her brothers through to the end of high school and working on finishing up her degree by correspondence with some barely accredited school that practically advertised on the back of the cereal box. Still, by the time she was 27, the boys were all gone off to school and she was left with a degree and a secret mutant power.
She spent a few months adrift, and then an invitation came from some private school in New York, wondering if she'd be interested in teaching physical education. After a very enlightening interview where she learned the unique nature of the school and that they somehow already knew her secret, Basset signed on as P.E. instructor.
Logs
Storylines
- None yet.
Watch For
- She keeps her background private from the students, but digging would bring up some of her disgraced departure from Yale. Students interested in picking at that scab can submit a +plot request to be fed info!
- Her 5 am Calisthenics Club - a much worse fate than detention. She holds it every morning, rain or shine, on the Xavier back grounds. Other teachers are welcome to sign their troublemakers up as well. (Again, toss in a +plot request if you would like to do a scene.)
Quotes
"Well, either they'll shape up or get in shape. Either way, I'd say my job is done."
People
Icon | Name | Notes |
---|---|---|
Xavier | Her superior offic- er… employer, Xavier commands a great deal of respect from Basset. She does not hesitate to carry out his instructions, though sometimes she finds his methods a little soft. |