MARGARET TOMBS: Age -35; Family - Daughter, Evelyn Laura Tombs; Husband, Ralph Tombs, dec; Parents, Thomas and Gwen Tombs, dec.
Codename - Doesn't have one. She prefers to keep a low, low profile. Never really planned to get involved in the whole supertights brigade. Probably something like Zombie or Puppeteer.
Powers - Margaret has the ability to deaden a person's mind and personality and replace it with an overwhelming desire to please and obey her. The victims of this power retain their physical and mutant abilities but they only act in response to Margaret's wishes and any knowledge they have is unavailable to her. When not carrying out her commands the subjects of her powers just tend to stand and stare blankly and don't respond to any external stimuli. Margaret can only influence two or three people at time depending on their mental strength before they start getting away from her. Since she's been keeping her daughter zombified for the last five years that limits her.
History-Margaret is a small, unexceptional looking woman with mousy brown hair and a pinched, pale skinned face. She usually wears baggy flowered dresses and low-heeled loafers. She has a nervous habit of washing her hands repeatedly against one another until the skin was chapped and raw. She has an obsessive-compulsive disorder and is a fanatic about cleanliness. There is nothing about her that would attract anyone's attention. At school she was an unattractive, unpopular girl and that didn't change any as she got older. She married Ralph Tombs, a dentist twenty years her senior, when she was seventeen years old, had a baby within two years and spent the next seven years of her life dominating the soft spoken, gentle man and making his life a living hell. She wasn't deliberately cruel, just very controlling and irrational about the dirt and filth that she imagined he was bringing into the house. She was more tolerant of her daughter-- she adored the beautiful baby with a passion verging on the unwholesome.
As Evelyn got older she grew to actively hate her mother and her smothering, controlling love. Margaret dictated every aspect of her child's life, what she wore, where she went, what she did and she didn't allow her any friends due to her jealousy of the girl's time and affection. It got worse after Ralph died when Evelyn was fourteen, committing suicide by drinking bleach. (No one at the time suspected that Margaret had actually done this to her husband-her first active use of her mutant ability. She had no traumatic stressor to activate her latent powers, apparently her increasing instability and the pressure of her OCD was enough to make her manifest).
For a while after Rupert's death life went on as before, though Margaret grew even more protective and controlling of her daughter. Then, when Evelyn was sixteen, she was injured during one of X-Factor's battles. It was only a minor cut on her head, requiring a brief stay in hospital and a few stitches but her mother was frantic. The final straw that broke her fragile grip on sanity was when Evelyn finally mustered up the courage to tell her mother that she was moving out and going to live with her boyfriend. For the first time Margaret consciously used her powers, against her own daughter. She's kept Evelyn under for the last two years, only relaxing her grip now and again when she needed her full resources for something else. By this time, even if she does release her daughter, Evelyn's probably suffered severe and irreversible brain damage. She's also used her powers to kill; ordering anyone whom inquired into Evelyn's health to kill themselves. This included Evelyn's boyfriend, the headmaster at her school and two nurses. Anyone whom she saw as threatening her daughter or herself. It's quite disturbing to see the two of them together, Evelyn is profoundly unresponsive to external stimuli by now and reacts sluggishly to even her mother's commands, her skin is also reddened and hardened by her mother's constant washings. Despite this Margaret holds long and lively chats with her daughter and seems to believe that she answers her.
Over the last two years she's also become increasingly convinced that it was X-Factor and Carolyn Xavier who were responsible for Evelyn's condition. Though whether it was the knock on the head or telepathic manipulation she can't decide on. (She does regularly accuse Carolyn of trying to steal her beautiful, perfect daughter.) She's determined to have her revenge on them. (People under for a short time remembers little of what occurs. The longer you're under the more you remember when you wake.)
Margaret is insane. She's also very dangerous. She's not that powerful herself but she can control those far more powerful than herself. Nor does she look that impressive, she looks like an inoffensive, suburban housewife. People are going to underestimate her severely! Finally she's a complete nutcase. At times, when she puts on rubber gloves and cleans everything frantically, it seems laughable to imagine her as a threat. Yet she has a sharp, feral intelligence that works in unexpected ways. She's also ruthless, paranoid and trusts no one. Creator: Tammy Moore