Katrina "Black Rose" Richards

[Katrina "Black Rose" Richards]

KATRINA ADELAIDE RICHARDS
BLACK ROSE

Well, hello there. My name is Charles Xavier, and who might you be?
Oh! Hello, Professor. I’m Katrina. Katrina Richards. Uhm, my friends call me Kat, I…don’t know if that’s what you want to call me or if you’re gonna be formal and call me “Miss Richards” or something but…uhm..yeah, I’m gonna stop talking now.

It’s very nice to meet you. Welcome to the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself?
Well…I’m not really very good at that. Talking, sure, I’m good at talking-which I guess you’ve noticed- but talking about myself? Uhm, where to start? I'm kind of a geek, dork, nerd, whathaveyou. I play Dungeons and Dragons, things like that, read comic books-though sometimes it seems a little redundant. I love Fantasy and Sci Fi novels. Uhm, I’m a mutant, just like my whole family on my mom’s side plus my little brother. I like to draw. I’m good with people, kind of, even without my powers, especially kids. And animals, I really like animals. I don’t have a problem with my mutations, I think my hair and eyes are kinda cool. I don’t think I’m very pretty in general. I think my mutations are the coolest things about me. Mutations are cool, I don’t care what anti-mutant assholes think. It makes us special.
My family life is…complicated. My mom, Ariana and brother, Andrew are mutants too, but mom’s got her stuff under control. She can communicate with the Astral plane and…see things. She’s got a bit of telekinesis, too. My brother’s got this weird levitation power and people only see him when he wants them to. Mom’s whole family are mutants too. Grandma was a precog and my aunt Matilda well….she likes to pretend she’s not a mutant ‘cause she’s afraid of her power…it is pretty scary, something to do with the dead. Anyway, I’m the first one in a while to get a physical mutation. I’m sure Andy’ll get something when he’s older. He’s got such control…I’m pretty jealous. He never needed to come here, to the Institute, but I needed help. A lot of help…I’m sorry, I’m supposed to be talking about me…uhm….My parents divorced when I was eight…not ‘cause of the mutant thing, but ‘cause dad…lost his mind. He just stopped being the same person. The divorce was pretty messy, but that’s how things go, right? I think considering everything I turned out pretty okay. Mom was a great influence and my time at the Insititute’s been amazing. I have some peculiarities that I don’t think have anything to do with being a mutant, though Dr. McCoy is endlessly fascinated by the possible connection. I have a pretty rare learning disability called Executive Dysfunction Disorder. It’s…complicated and I don’t understand it fully, but it messes with my executive functions, something about my frontal lobe and organization. But I’m fine with organizing other people, that’s why I co-lead my squad. But when it comes to myself, I’m kind of a mess. I don’t sleep right, Dr. McCoy says I lack a circadian rhythm? He says it means I have no internal clock. And I forget to breath sometimes, it’s called Sleep Apnea, but it happens sometimes when I’m awake too. I’ve got mild Anxiety Disorder too, but I fight that most of all. If I’m ever going to be an X Man then I’m going to need to deal with anxiety-causing situations. But I try not to let any of that get to me. I need to focus on my powers and on my team, my friends. I have to be the best for them and that’s the most important thing to me. People rely on me and I can’t let them down. I won’t.

Over the years, we have striven to make this a safe haven for mutants everywhere. You are no exception. But you have exceptional powers, don’t you? Why don’t you tell me what it is you can do?
Well, my main ability is Empathy. I can…feel the emotions of others as if they were my own. I can sort of influence other people’s feelings, too, but that’s a lot harder. I used to have a minor healing factor as a baby, nothing extraordinary, compared to most mutants with healing abilities I healed pretty slow, but compared to most humans…well, it didn’t seem natural. I somehow grew out of that, though. I can also do this…thing…with energies. Personal energies, the stuff people give off all on their own? It’s kind of like a life force or an aura, magic users use the stuff to augment their spells when drawing from the energies in their bodies, but it’s not really magic…it’s science. I can manipulate personal energies to do lots of things. I can combine it with my empathy to sooth people, I can set up little wards on small items to help people ward off negative energies, I can…sort of heal people, but it’s exhausting. When people carry baggage of a personal nature I feel it with my empathy but I can also try to fix it using their energies. It’s….complicated…and hard…and dangerous. When I used to try it before I took the negative energy int o myself. I’m not supposed to try to fix people anymore. I’m trying to learn to weaponize the energy too. I’m told it’s possible to make it more tangible, but I need to learn more about magic and…I need more control.

My, that is something! I think you’ll do just fine here. Some of our students like to give themselves “code names,” Do you have one in mind?
I chose the name Black Rose a long time ago. For starters, I love them. Black roses, they’re nnot really black, they’re kind of a deep, dark purple, like my hair. It sounded cool and….there’s really no good codenames for an Empath,

When did your mutant abilities manifest? What happened, and how did your family take the news?
That’s a…long and varied story. I was born pretty normal. I learned stuff real fast and healed quickly, but that wasn’t anything to take too much notice of. Both of those talents wore off as I grew up. My physical mutation started manifesting when I was eight. It started with my hair. Mom says it was the stress from the divorce, I mentioned that it was messy. There was a lot of screaming and fighting going on. It was hard to be in the same room as dad, he had fits. I think I might have had a little hint of my empathic abilities then, but blocked it out, I don’t remember it much. By the time I was nine and the divorce was over, my once brown hair would never be brown again. During a big screaming match on mom’s doorstep I had a small episode. I shouted at them to stop fighting, that was when my eyes changed. Dad…freaked out a little bit. He was on a big “mom was evil” kick and said I was just like her. Later he told me he still loved me ‘cause I was his little girl, but over the years, any chance to say I was just like my mother, he’d say it. Everything settled ok after a while. Dad remarried, I got a step sister…she was never sure what to make of me. Janine and her mom, Lana were pretty religious, but she thought my hair was cool and said I was strong and she liked that. I thought that was the extent of my powers. Mom had taught me some energy stuff but that didn’t feel like much of a mutation, everyone in my family could do that. I got upset. Everyone in my family had a gift, even Andy was developing powers really early. I felt left out, like I wasn’t special enough. I wanted to be a mutant, I wanted a gift more than anything. I went through some problems when we moved to the suburbs. My new friends had…baggage. I let it get to me. Literally. I tried to fix them and my emotions ran wild, I couldn’t control it, I was so sad all the time, or angry, it was like, whoever I was near I felt what they felt but so much worse. I was like some kind of megaphone for their emotions. Mom suggested it could be my mutant power. I said that was stupid, why couldn’t I get something cool like Andy. But one day…it got really bad. I couldn’t function. Everyone around me was bottling up so much of how they felt and I could feel it all. All of it. All of the hurt, the pain, the fear and anger, the rage. That’s what happens when you’re twelve, you feel everything so much…and my friends had a penchant for drama. I thought I was going to die, it was like everyone’s voices were in my head, screaming as loud as they could. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t see or feel anything but their emotions. I screamed and cried and…I don’t remember much after that except opening my eyes to the sight of my mother holding me and my friends standing far away. She told me it would be okay.
I stopped going to school, I stayed away from my friends. None of them understood. They were just too much, I couldn’t separate my feelings from theirs and I’d tried to fix them too much. I stayed in my room for a week, only mom came to visit. Then she told me about an old friend of hers who could help me. I said nobody could help me, but she just smiled and said he was very good at what he did and what he did was help mutants. His name was Professor Charles Xavier and he had a special school. I was scared at first, I didn’t want to live in New York, away from my mother. But…Everyone was so nice. I had to stay away from other students for a long time. It turned out mutant teenagers were a lot more damaged than human teenagers. Only teachers and specific students were allowed near me. I worked with Professor X and other telepaths and kind people. Dr. McCoy was a big part of my integration too. Eventually, I learned to control my empathy enough to be around others.

I see. These experiences help shape us and our future actions. This school has the chance to be a new beginning for all who enter here. Some students go on to become members of a team known as “X Men,” some go on to become teachers, guiding the next generation of mutants and others still filter back into normal society to pursue more “conventional” careers. How do you see your own future? We all have aspirations.
I want…control. I want to know what I can do and I want to be good at it. I want to lead my squad and make everyone proud. Long term, I’d like to be an X Man! I want to help people. I sometimes think I’d like to teach, I want to teach young mutants with physical mutations that they’re beautiful and there’s nothing to be ashamed of.


We’ll see how you feel when it comes to that. I’ll have one of the advisors show you to your new room. I hope you’ll be very happy here.
Thank you, Professor…I’ll do my best.