Mallory Nadine Butler

the basics

full name ♦ Mallory Nadine Butler
nicknames ♦ Mal
age ♦ twenty-four
birthday ♦ January 28, 1994
occupation ♦ Owner of In the NOLA
school ♦ Primrose Academy alumna
species ♦ Human
ability/power ♦ Pyrokinesis
how the ability works ♦
Mal can create fire, and absorb it as well. While it is certainly easier for her to absorb fire and use that, she can generate her own, it just takes much more effort on her part. She can make flames appear from her body and can choose whether or not to ignite what she’s wearing—which she usually opts against for obvious reasons—but if she is attempting to ignite something else it has to be within ten feet of her, an object she can see, and it must be combustible in its own right, which is to say that she can’t exactly set something that won’t burn on fire. In order to use her power, she also has to be relatively warm, body temperature wise. The lower the temperature, the harder it is for her to get her ability to work, and the resulting flames will both be weak and difficult to control. Triggering her power is relatively easy, and is often tied to emotions of joy or anger though this is not a requirement. Controlling her powers, on the other hand, can be tricky, and if she is distracted while she’s attempting to control any kind of flame, it will either go out completely or start to burn of its own accord, quickly becoming stronger and harder to control. Mal is also immune to her own fire burning her, but is not immune to burns from external sources. She is also particularly temperature sensitive when it comes to cold, and loathes the winter months as a result.
gender ♦ Cis-female | She/her(s)
sexuality ♦ Heterosexual

the appearance

face claim ♦ Sophie Turner
height and weight ♦ 5’9” | 152 lbs
identifying features ♦ Mal has both of her earlobes pierced once, and has a few small tattoos scattered over her body. Most of them consist of line and dotwork pieces, though she does have at least one more traditional style tattoo.
overall appearance ♦
From the moment that most people look at Mal, they can tell that she’s proud of her appearance. She has a thorough respect for fashion, and prides herself on wearing clothes that are considered cutting edge and expensive. In the colder months, she has a tendency to really layer up her clothing in an attempt to keep out the chill. She also has very long, red hair that she usually keeps down, though she will sometimes wear if up and out of her face when she’s at work. Whatever way she’s wearing it, it always looks very shiny and perfect, and it is very evident to most people that her hair is one of her favorite features, because she feels that it sets her apart. She is a rather tall woman, standing at 5’9”, and is incredibly slim, though there is a slight amount of muscle built up from the time that she spends in the gym.

the personality

likes ♦
-Spending time with Adam (and giving him a hard time, of course)
-Writing
-Fire
-Coffee
-Taekwondo
-Older pop music
dislikes ♦
-The cold
-Geese
-Ill-fitting clothing
-Being told no
-Getting yelled at
-Bugs, especially cockroaches
strengths ♦
-Charismatic
-Writing
-Flirtatious
-Assertive
weaknesses ♦
-Overbearing
-Perfectionist
-Temperamental
-Holds a grudge
dreams ♦
-To expand In the NOLA
-To make her parents proud
-To become a national champion in Taekwondo
fears ♦
-To get seriously hurt in a match. It’s never even been a possibility, but it’s something she’s terrified of nonetheless.
-To fail her family, particularly her brother.
overall personality ♦
Mal likes to present herself as a relatively simpler person: a tenacious journalist with a passion for getting what she wants in life and enough drive to make it happen. However, she is much more than she appears. It is true that she is incredibly charming and charismatic, and she knows how to work a room better than almost anybody that she knows. Yet, she has an intense temper that is rather easy to trigger, and anybody who says it isn’t is either lying so she doesn’t get pissed off, or they haven’t seen it because she has somewhat decent control over it. She also has quite a bit of control over herself, as well as focus on her goals, two things that were a core part of the taekwondo lessons she started taking as a teenager. She is an extremely competitive person, however, and that tends to override the part of her brain dedicated to discipline and control. The most classic example of this is when she gets into a drinking contest at the bar, and will go overboard if it means she can win. The one complaint that people often have when it comes to Mal is that she can be a bit… much. Her boisterous and in-your-face personality can be incredibly overbearing, and even frustrating depending on how much time you spend around her. However, those who find a friend in her are quick to tell others how loyal, kind-hearted, and generous that she can be… when she wants to.

the history

father ♦ William Clifford Butler, 49, Politician, Owner of In the NOLA
mother ♦ Penelope Abigail Butler (nee Pennbrooke), 47, Fashion Designer and Owner of a Fashion House
siblings ♦
@adam , 24, twin brother
Duncan Nereus Butler, 18, Student
important people ♦
Geoffrey Carus Butler, 46, Politician and Owner of In the NOLA, Uncle
hometown ♦ New York City
overall history ♦
From the time that William Butler was born, he knew neither hardship nor suffering. With incredibly wealthy parents and a lavish lifestyle, he grew up having everything that he ever wanted, but it was this lifestyle that ultimately led him to lead a playboy life. Penelope Pennbrook grew up in a similar fashion, and learned how to walk and talk right alongside learning things like good social graces. By the time that she was old enough to go to school she had been molded into an ideal daughter, though she certainly didn’t act like one when her parents were around. What brought them together was not their powers, but an arrangement between their parents, one that neither one of them really agreed to in the beginning, but after a few times of meeting with one another, they grew to be fond of each other. Fond enough, at least, to agree to marry shortly after graduating from school, and giving birth to a set of twins one short year after their marriage: Adam and Mallory. The twins were raised with the same advantages as their parents,and despite being incredibly wealthy, the entire Butler family was incredibly close. Birthdays, graduations (however meaningless they might seem), award ceremonies, no matter the occasion, the entire family was most likely there to see it. The exception, of course, being that occasionally William needed to be away, such was the life of an affluent politician. The twins were also incredibly close growing up, and Mallory can only really remember a handful of times in her life when they weren’t together as children.

At fifteen, however, things were slightly different. Her and her brother were still close, but there was something about her that had… shifted. Changed. There was a kind of presence to her that there hadn’t been before. There were little signs: her palms heating up when she got nervous, her coffee boiling in its cup when she got angry, the way that she always seemed to be slightly warm even though she felt completely normal. One day, she got the craziest idea in her head that maybe, just maybe, she could try to make a flame appear above her hand. It was crazy, and she didn’t expect it to happen, but when the smoke began to rise from her fingertips, and a small little bit of orange flame raced over her palm, the first thing that she did was stare at it in disbelief. The second thing she did was run down the hallway to Adam’s room, frantically pounding on the door until he let her in. It was in his room that she attempted to light her hand on fire again, only this time, the flame wasn’t quite as small. The longer she held it, the larger it grew, and Mal had no idea how to control it. Before she could even call for help, the room had caught on fire, trapping them both. By the time that they were rescued, Adam had severe burns all over his back and his right side and was rushed to the hospital. And Mallory? She had some singed hair, maybe a little smoke inhalation. Within moments of being seen by a doctor, she was cleared to go home, but Adam would have to stay and recover.

Riddled with guilt, Mal hardly left her brother’s side while he recovered, aside from when her parents made her. Adam, being Adam, always waved her off, and told her not to worry about it, deflecting to the fact that she had superpowers and that was awesome. And it was, but the problem was she had no idea how to control them, which meant that she had no chance at stopping herself from hurting someone the way she had hurt her twin brother. The revelation that she was not the only one, that her twin brother also had powers and that he could manipulate water the way that she could manipulate fire, was both a blessing and a curse. While it meant that the two of them were still complimenting each other, as always, it put their father between a rock and a hard place. It was William who ultimately decided that the twins would go to Primrose Academy, a prestigious school for the most affluent gifted children.

While there, Mal made friends quick, and soon found herself the ringleader of a rather large band of people. There was nothing that went on at Primrose that they, and by extension she did not know about, and that power thrilled her in a way that she hadn’t expected. It was during this time that their parents took a shine to New Orleans the same way that the two of them had, and they all moved down to Louisiana together, moving into a house just down the street from their Uncle Geoffrey. Despite the beauty of the house, it was rarely used between William’s involvement in politics and Penelope’s problems with her fashion house, but they returned for every holiday without fail, and William was so invested with the community that he and his brother acquired ownership of In the NOLA, the local paper that catered particularly to gifted individuals. However, during the summers the Butler family traveled and existed together, and while it was a nice break from school most of the time, it was something that Mal in particular had come to dread.

When she was seventeen years old, Mal began to take up different types of martial arts, due to her tendency to be quick to anger that also resulted in a loss of control with her power. One of her teachers had suggested that maybe she was lacking focus, and while Mal had mostly been hoping to prove her wrong, in the end she enjoyed taekwondo enough to continue on with it, working her way through belt after belt as soon as she could. It did help with her anger, and it helped get some of the frustrations out that she felt like she couldn’t talk about with Adam, who seemed to be dwelling in his own troubles and would likely not want to chat about hers, no matter how close the two of them had remained over the years.

Adam and Mal graduated Primrose exactly when they were expected to, and quickly found themselves in positions with the family-owned paper called In the NOLA. Already fascinated with writing, Mal took to it easily, but Adam did not seem to enjoy that aspect of it, and preferred to stay on the business side of things. As she grew older, and grew within the company, Mal began to have ideas on how to expand the paper, on how to help carry it out of being solely a print media publication and how to attract new readership in the process. So far, her father and her uncle haven’t really listened to her, but she’s determined to make them since she knows it’s something that she could do with relative ease. However, she can also tell that Adam isn’t majorly happy with his job, something that is more twin-tuition than anything else, and quite frankly, it makes her sad. At the end of the day, she just wants what’s best for him, even while she’s seeking the same kind of fulfillment in her own occupation.

the role player

alias ♦ Sara
age ♦ 24
pronouns ♦ She/her(s)
code ♦ ADMIN EDIT
other characters ♦ Cora Elaine Marshall , Sophie de la Cruz , Joshua Eliot Holmes , Piper Addison Davies