Gertrude Yorkes - Powers and Abilities

Powers and Abilities

Gert has no physical powers, but a mental link with Old Lace. Old Lace makes her first appearance after being discovered in a secret compartment in Gert's basement. Gert discovered that she had a telepathic bond to Old Lace when the dinosaur halted from devouring the Runaways because Gert yelled out "STOP IT!" in fear. In one of the Runaways' early encounters with the Pride, Gert also discovered she had an empathic bond to Old Lace when she experienced the same pain Old Lace felt. Gert's telepathic bond to Old Lace allowed her to directly communicate with the dinosaur and command it to do anything she wished. The bond worked both ways, enabling Old Lace to transfer her thoughts directly to Gert, but Old Lace could not give commands to Gert in the same fashion. Old Lace was unconditionally loyal to Gert, even to the point of fighting against the team; Old Lace once lashed out at Nico without Gert's orders when Gert and Nico had their brief falling out. Gert and Old Lace's empathic bond was beneficial in that whenever one was healed, the other would always get better. However, it also made each known to injuries they wouldn't normally be grossly affected by. For example, in Runaways volume 2, issue 7, Gert refuses to fight Swarm because she is allergic to bee stings and posits that even one sting on Old Lace could end the both of them.

Though Gertrude herself possessed no powers she seemed to have a high level of intellect at her age being able in the first volume to understand how Cloaks' cape and powers worked and how to revive them. While Marvel Handbook files have indeed given her intelligence levels a rating of 4 out of 7, and thus reasonably higher than the average mind, equal to Alex or even Victor Mancha's, she was not quite a genius. In the third volume when the team reunited and got back, when she returned to the team with Molly stating "It's hard to trick the guards when they're all psychics", though unknown if it was sarcasm or true. In the first volume her smarts seemed to be on the same level as Alex Wilder seeing to be the first to understand him.