After that night, nothing was the same for Sukina. A week after the talk with her father she locked her doors and only came out at meals, if at all. Something had stirred inside her. One night, while Stein was asleep, she snuck into his lab and stole surgical equipment. Scalpels, gauze, string, scissors, syringes, one or two of each. Sukina became a bit too inquisitive. She had to find out about the other side; even if it meant destroying herself, just like her father did.
Five years. Five years of quarantine. Something that's not exactly good for a 13-year-old.
Sukina tightened and snipped of the remaining string. The last test had gone well. She decided it would be the final one. Sukina twisted her neck bolt until it clicked. She wiped the last bit of blood off of her hands and got up from her desk. I should go check the data, she thought. It's time to see if the conclusion proves the hypothesis.
Sukina quickly ran her fingers across the stitches on her cheek, hand, arm, wrist, and quickly the one at her collarbone. She sighed. She knew she would never be the same again, not after what she'd done to herself. Sukina knew it had to have been for the best, in more ways than one.
Before the stitches, if someone looked at Sukina you could tell Medusa was her mother; with dirty blond hair, not to mention Sukina's tangerine eyes; shades away from the eerie yellow of Medusa's. But now, if someone saw her, all they would be able to focus on would be the stitches and the neck bolt; now Sukina's predominant features.
Sukina grabbed the papers off her desk and sat back down on the edge of her bed to examine them. "Conclusion reached...hypothesis proven," she muttered with distaste. "UGH!" She jumped up and threw the papers in the air, enraged. "Hypothesis proven: there is absolutely nothing! NOTHING! No matter what I do, my studies and experiments show NOTHING! AGH!" She sat down and made odd motions with her hands, hoping it would help with the frustration.
She sat up and took off the lab coat her mother had made her when she was little; back when she and her father did little experiments together. She had been so full of curiosity, such innocent curiosity... but it was gone now.
Sukina folded it up and placed it next to her. She got up and started picking up the papers she had thrown. But as soon as she had them all in her arms, one slipped out and started to float down to the floor. Soon two more followed. And as Sukina reached out with her right hand and started to grab for them, a small, electric jolt of black lightning shot out from her fingertips. It sliced through the air in the room and hit a pencil on Sukina's desk, staining the area of the writing utensil that had been hit charcoal black. She hopped back in surprise and covered her hand, dropping the papers and backing up to the edge of her bed, scooting all the way down to the end against the wall, where her pillow was.
Her eyes widened as she looked from her partially covered hand to the pencil on her desk and back again. "What the hell?" she muttered, a queer look forming on her face. She was so entranced by what her hand had done that she wasn't paying attention to its appearance. It was slowly fading now, but the skin on her fingertips had turned an eerie jet-black. The peculiar shade dispersed, and she didn't notice. "Did I just do that?" Sukina slowly inched herself over to the desk. She touched the pencil with the fingers on her left hand and pulled back immediately. "Ahh!" she exclaimed, glad her father was at the academy teaching and not at home. It stung her fingers to touch the pencil.
Suddenly a hypothesis formed in Sukina's mind, as well as a small experiment to test it. She walked back to the desk and let her right hand, the one that had shot the magic, slowly move towards the pencil. She touched it; it felt fine. Her fingers closed around it, and she brought it up to her face so she could examine it closer. Her mind whirred with the new discovery. A smile crept its way onto her lips; Sukina considered the other possibilities of what she could do. She wasn't allowed outside, she hadn't been since her mother died, but she had to go and explore and discover what other powers flowed through her.
But Dad won't let me go outside until I turn 15, in two more years! Sukina thought with regret. And if I tell him I have these powers, he'll NEVER let me out of here... I'll just keep it a secret! I'll learn to control it in private. I have two years, might as well do something with the time, she concluded silently.
And Sukina did just that. She got pretty good, the two years whizzed by with all the training and practice she did. There were a few more burnt pencils, some scorched papers, and singed pieces of gauze, but Sukina could finally control her powers. A day before her 15th birthday the list totaled up to: the black lightning (strange, especially since she had a pair of earrings that resembled white lighting bolts) and changing her hair color from her natural dirty blond color to black and anywhere in between (turning her hair partially black; giving it a dyed look). Sukina felt accomplished at what little she had discovered, but knew she'd have to continue to keep it hidden from everyone, including her father.