Individual Character's full name: Katrina Irene Noe Dumonde
Nicknames: Kat, Kitten
Code name: None
Gender: Female
Age: legally 17 (
biologically 18)
Birthday: July 14, 1995
Nationality: American
Ethnicity: Ethnicity: 50% French, 25% English, 25% Finnish
Birthplace: Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Childhood Home: Ashland (near Richmond), Virginia, USA
Current Home: Xavier's Sister School for Gifted Mutants; New York City, NY, USA
AppearanceHair color and style: Straight, light blonde, chin length bob (aiming for shoulder length)
Eyes: Grey
Height: 5 feet (1.52 meters)
Build: Slight and flat chested. She is smaller than other girls her age; she lacks both their height and their curves.
Visible mutation: None
Scars/ Tattoos: None
Piercings: Ears are single pierced
Other features: She inherited her mother's high finnish cheekbones, pale skin, and small nose. Her eyes are her father's with a slight color change, large, but not too large, with long eye lashes.
Everyday clothing style: In general Katrina dresses nicely. Generally in warmer weather she wears sun dresses or skirts and tops. She has also taken to wearing bicycle shorts under her skirts, just in case and mischievous air elementals decide she needs impromptu flying lessons. In cooler weather she starts with dress pants and cardigans and gradually adds layers as the temperature decreases. She dislikes socks and shoes and generally goes barefoot when possible.
Uniform: None
Sleepwear: Katrina prefers silky pajamas for their soft texture. She has both night gowns and matching tops and bottoms.
Miscellaneous clothing: She has a pair of
aviator goggles that were a memento of an
epic adventure. She also has a
red ninja scarf was a Christmas gift from
someone special. As a gift from a
friend abroad, she received a small tiara with real diamonds. =o.v=
CharacterPersonality: Katrina is normally cheerful, optimistic, and friendly (unless it is early in the morning). She is outgoing and makes friends easily, but she also enjoys being quiet and spending time by herself from time to time. Experience has led her to become more suspicious of strangers, but once someone has earned her trust, she is very loyal. She worries about her freinds' well being and has a constant nagging fear that something might happen to them and she'll never see them again. Consequently, she tends to be very excited and childishly affectionate when reuinted with friends she hasn't seen for awhile.
Hobbies/ Interests: Katrina likes to learn, but prefers to do it on her own time and at her own pace. She can often be found in the library reading books on a broad range of subjects, though this doesn't always translate into good grades (especially in math). Music is one of her favorite subjects; she plays oboe and practices nearly every day. She is also a Trekkie and is starting to like watching anime as well. She used to ride horseback, but hasn't had the opportunity to do so since she moved to the mansion. From her years of riding, she fell in love with the feeling of wind in her hair and she loves going fast; she'd love to have a motorcycle some day, or a convertable. She is developing an increasing interest in global politics and human/ mutant relations across the world.
Job or part time job and description: None
Fears/ phobias/ concerns: She is suspicious of strangers and has bad memories of sewers. Black hair and green eyes are not a good combination in her opinion. She is not a fan of vampires or anything else that wants to eat her.
Paranoias: Katrina is protective of her oboe. She abhors the idea that it might be damaged in some way and tries to keep it from cracking by sheltering it from extreme temperature changes. It is one of the only things she owns that she truly feels belongs to her and she has had it since before she moved to the mansion.
Special talents: Playing oboe, folding paper cranes
MoralityKatrina generally follows the rules and tries to do what she thinks others expect of her. She has a relatively rigid view of right and wrong, and strives to do what is right because she doesn't want to disappoint anyone. She can sometimes be influenced by peers to do something that breaks rules, though there is always a sense of danger in doing so and she feels very uncomfortable when considering her own motivations for doing something that she thinks is wrong.
She strongly dislike violence, and strives for accord between individuals and groups. She is inherently peaceful and wants everyone to get along with each other. She is becoming increasingly interested in working towards global peace in whatever ways she can.
MutationsMutation description: [/i] (sensory nervous system broadcasting). Katrina creates illusions by altering the input to another person's sensory nervous system. She does not create anything that actually exists in the real world, but a person senses (sees, smells, hears, tastes, and/or feels) her illusions as if they are real. Katrina's own nerves fire in tune with those that sense her illusions so she senses both her own illusion and reality in equal measures.
Sense-walking (sensory nervous system reception). Rather than broadcasting her own illusions onto someone else's nervous system, Katrina can receive input along the same channel that she sends it. This allows her to sense exactly what a target senses in addition to sensing what is around her own body, each in equal measures.
Dream-walking (complete sensory nervous system overlap). While asleep, Katrina can mesh her senses completely with a target's, both sending and receiving input along an open channel between the two. The effect is that of a shared dream.[/ul]
Strengths:- Group/ individual illusions: Katrina automatically broadcasts her illusions to everyone in a room. If she concentrates on a single target, she can create illusions that only that person will sense. The more people that are effected by the illusion, the more energy it takes, and the more severe and longer lasting the side effects are. Sending to individuals requires more concentration, but less energy.
- Multiple sense illusions: Katrina can affect multiple senses at one time. However, combining multiple senses in an illusions increases the complexity of the illusion, the concentration and energy required, and the severity of the side effects she experiences afterwards.
- Sensory deprivation: Katrina can also make a person feel nothing at all. A person who has been deprived of all their senses would feel like their mind was floating in a void completely separated from any stimulus the world provides. Using this requires that Katrina manipulate all of the senses at once, which is much more complicated than just one at a time, which severely decreases the amount of time she can do it and greatly increases the severity of side effects.
- Semi-permanent illusions: Katrina can, with considerable effort, create illusions that continue to exist even after she is no longer focusing on them. The recipe for such an illusion includes a solid object to which the illusion is attached, a bit of Katrina's dna, steady concentration on the desired image, physical energy, and a lot of time for planning and creation. The longer Katrina spends concentrating on creating a semi-permanent illusion, the longer it will last. Something she spends hours to days working on might last a few months before fading. The same side effects apply as regular illusions while she is working on them, but they require no additional energy from her after they are finished.
- Sense-walking: Katrina can receive signals from someone else's nervous system, partly overwriting her senses with those of another person. As the person walks away from her, Katrina rides along by sensing what they sense as they go. She can only do this to one person at a time. If the person has a mutation that gives them better than normal or extra senses, it allows her access to experience senses she doesn't have herself. With enough practice, she could eventually create illusions to fool those extra senses. (She does not sense thoughts or emotions, she only senses what is happening to their body.)
- Dream-walking: By meshing her nervous system with other dreamers Katrina can co-create dreams with them. The effect varies, the dreamers could have a shared dream-self with shared experiences or they may have separate and distinct selves that interact with each other in the same dreamscape. They might share thoughts or they might keep thoughts to themselves.
Weaknesses:- Strong minded people: With enough effort and practice, strong minded people can learn to ignore the false information Katrina is feeding their nervous systems. They may see illusions as Katrina sees them, half reality and half illusion, or they may be able to block any influence completely.
- Technology: Illusions cannot affect technology. They cannot be recorded by video or in photograph. A person watching an illusion through a video camera's screen would see the illusion on the screen only if they were within her range, but if they were at a remote location or using a time delay they would not be fooled.
- Extra senses: Katrina cannot deliberately affect senses that she has not experienced herself. Any sense above and beyond those in Katrina's own experience are not affected by her illusions. Experiencing new senses through sense-walking gives her a terrible headache as her brain adjusts to accommodate the new type of information. The farther away a sense is from something she has previous experience with, the more painful and longer lasting the headache.
- Range: Katrina's range depends on the type of illusion she is using and how much practice she has using it. Currently, an individual illusion that effects only one sense can be broadcast across a city, but it will become distorted or faint at the outer edges of her reach. For normal illusions, her range is about half a block. Sense-walking requires that she touch her target to initiate a connection; after the initial connection is made, Katrina's range is the same as with her normal illusions. Dream-walking requires that Katrina be within a few hundred feet of her target the entire time.
- Endurance: All illusions cost Katrina physical energy to create. The length of time she can use illusions depends on the number of people she is affecting and the complexity of the illusion. Currently six hours is her maximum time, but it is divided by number of senses and number of people affected. If she stretches herself too far Katrina will get lightheaded, dizzy, and eventually faint.
- Afterimages: After creating an illusion, Katrina senses an afterimage related to the type of illusion she created, for example, her ears might ring after making a sound illusion. This side effect gets more severe with complexity, number of people affected, number of senses affected, and other factors.
- Sense-walking hazards:
- Dream-walking hazards:
- For dream-walking to work, both Katrina and her target must both be asleep and dreaming at the same time. Katrina cannot force anyone or even herself to sleep or dream.
- Subconsciously, someone may decide they don't want someone else poking around in their dream. This could cause a dream to quickly turn into a nightmare.
- Drugged sleep makes for strange and unpredictable dreams. Waking up before the drug wears off is difficult to impossible, which could trap her in an unpleasant or dangerous dream.
- Severe injury, death, or falling in a dream would normally cause her to wake up. If she is drugged into sleeping, she would 'wake up' in a different dream, not realizing at first that it was still a dream.
- As with creating illusions, dream-walking causes her to see afterimages of what she created. When she wakes up, some of her images follow her back to reality. The longer she spends dream-walking, the more severe the afterimages are. Overuse of this ability could cause her to lose the distinction between the dream world and the real one.
Fighting StyleKatrina is a pacifist. She will avoid conflicts if at all possible. If attacked she will use her abilities to confuse or immobilize the enemy until she can get away. Turning invisible to run away or hide is almost instinctive for her.
Faction Allegiance Unaffiliated. Katrina lives and goes to school at the mansion. She joined the X-kids because she liked the idea of doing service projects around the city to help make it nicer for everyone. She has no interest in fighting, though, so she probably won't join the X-men. She has friends in every faction and hates when the groups end up fighting each other.
History Of Your Character(Most of this took place on screen, see also
Katrina's thread archive.)
Katrina grew up in big brick house in Ashland, Virginia where she lived with her parents Jean and Claire Dumonde and their butler Hans Jentick who was like an uncle to her. Her family was very busy, but still very close.
In the fall of 2007, when her father was celebrating the passing of the Mutant Registration Act with a group of fellow Senators, Katrina's mutation began to manifest itself while she was asleep. Her mother who had been hiding the fact that she was a mutant, recognized the signs right away and managed to convince her husband, without letting him in on the secret, that their daughter would need to be sent to a special school for protection against those who would be upset at the passing of the MRA.
Katrina arrived at Xavier's Sister School the night before it was raided by police officers and Stalker robots rounding up mutants who had not yet registered themselves with the government. Katrina was able to escape detection, and ended up living with the Resistance that sheltered mutants at Mondragon Labs as it prepared for an attack on the concentration camps that had been built for those mutants that were thought to be too dangerous to roam free even with mutation sensing shock collars. During the year she spent at the Labs, Katrina made many friends, without any knowledge of the faction lines that would seperate them all from each other once the Resistance and the spirit of cooperation it provided was no longer necessary.
The mutant concentration camp was liberated, the Registration Act abolished, and life returned to 'normal', which meant that Katrina returned to the mansion to help rebuild and to attend school. There, she was reunited with her mother who took a job running the mansion's kitchen while her daughter got down to the business of attending classes and doing homework. And making friends. And going on adventures.
If Katrina's end of the year report card had graded her ability to get into trouble, her gpa would have been raised significantly; a random early morning encounter turned into an orphanage adventure, a community service situation at the zoo grew a little out of control, and an argument with her mother turned into a (runaway) sleepover adventure at the Sanctuary. But Katrina didn't need to go anywhere for adventure to find her, even at the mansion she managed to get tangled up in a birthday brawl in the front yard, a nostalgic visit to the attic, and an epic exploration of the deepest darkest corners of the school's basement.
The summer was not a particularly fun one for Katrina. The jumble of memories she received after waking up from a strange dream of the future was overshadowed by worrying about a missing friend and, consequently, an unfortunate run in with a mysterious green eyed man who kidnapped and tortured her. She managed to escape, but it took her several months of recovery to deal with the emotional scars. Distractions helped, such as epic adventures in Romania and a Chirstmas run-in with Cthulhu in clay form. Oh yes, and boys, who are turning out to be more troublesome than anything Katrina has ever come up against before (including vampires, WWIII, crazy canadians, and elder gods).
RoleplayWhere did you learn about this site?: My (former) roommate Calley convinced me to join.
Other characters on MRO: Sebastian, Calliope (moderator account)
Sample RPMonday:
Katrina couldn't believe that she already had math homework just a week into the new school year. Math was not her strongest subject; she preferred music or horseback riding, not that horseback riding was a school subject. It should be, she thought, but apparently schools thought math would be more useful later in life than riding horses. Katrina sighed and pulled her math notebook out of her backpack. She might as well finish it quickly so she could spend the rest of the evening the way she wanted: playing oboe and visiting Galahad out in his pasture. Katrina set up her math things in the study and looked at the first problem. It seemed easy enough, but that might mean she wasn't doing it right. You could never trust math.
...
Half way through her math problems the phone rang. Her mother smiled at her as she glided into the study and answered the phone, "Dumonde residence, this is Claire speaking."
Katrina recognized the voice on the other end of the line; it was her father and he sounded excited about something. "Darling, guess what? It passed! The bill passed!" Was it Katrina's imagination or did her mother roll her eyes at that? Her father continued, "I've invited a few people over tonight to celebrate, they will be there at eight. Will you inform Hans? I believe we may be running low on champagne."
"Of course, Jean," her mother responded.
Her father continued, "Oh, and have Katrina put on something nice, too. She should greet some of the guests, of course she won't be able too stay up too late, since it is a school night." Katrina grimaced at her mother. "Well, I have to go, but I'll be home by 7:00 or so. Don't wait for me for supper, I'll grab something up here in D.C. to eat on the way home. Love you, give Katrina a kiss for me." Her father hung up.
"Mom" Katrina drew out the word so it had many more syllables than it normally would, in a perfect imitation of a teenager groan. She was getting good at it even though she wouldn't officially become a teenager for another 10 months. "Do I have to go?"
Her mother smiled and winked, "If I have to get all dressed up to meet these people, then so do you. At least you'll be able to ditch as soon as everyone arrives."
Katrina sighed, "Fine."
...
The rest of the evening flew by. Katrina practiced oboe before supper, but only had a few minutes after supper to say hi to Galahad. She brought him a carrot stick to make up for the short visit and he crunched it happily as she rushed back into the house to get dressed for the party. Almost as soon as she had finished dressing the guests started arriving. She sighed and headed down the stairs.
Everyone seemed to be in remarkably good spirits. Some important bill
had passed; Katrina didn't pay very close attention to politics. Hans came around with hors d'oeuvres and winked at Katrina.
Finally after what seemed like eternity it was 9:00. Katrina couldn't remember having ever been so glad for bedtime. She hugged her mother goodnight and kissed her father on the cheek then went up to bed. She was surprisingly tired and her stomach felt a little weird. She blamed the math homework.
...
Back downstairs Claire was wishing she could go up to bed too. She'd had a busy day organizing a fund raiser for the library. Also, she didn't drink and everyone here was getting rather tipsy; they were celebrating and she didn't really have any reason to celebrate. That and drinking gave her a terrible headache. Maybe they wouldn't notice if she slipped away. This lot looked like they wouldn't notice if miniature purple elephants were flying around the room waving calculators and wearing angry expressions.
Wait a minute. Claire did a double take. There were miniature purple elephants flying around the room! That could only mean...
Claire slipped into the kitchen and split herself in two. She felt her mind start to flit back and forth between the two selves. She wasn't really in two places at once, but she flitted back and forth so fast that both seemed solid and she could consciously be in both places as well. She went back out to the party and smiled as if nothing had happened.
And she rushed upstairs to check on Katrina. Sure enough, she was asleep, but her room seemed to be the source of the flying purple elephants. The elephants waved their calculators menacingly and Katrina moaned. Claire gently woke her up. Instantly the elephants vanished from the bedroom and from the party. No one remarked on their disappearance.
Katrina sleepily gazed up at her. "I had a bad dream, I think."
"Shh, honey, just go to the bathroom and go back to sleep."
Having overseen this task, Claire went back to the kitchen and sat in one of the chairs, rubbing her temples. A senator from Maryland was recounting the blow by blow of the voting earlier that day that had made law a bill that required mutants to be registered.
Mutants like her.
And now Katrina.
Hans came through the door carrying an empty champagne bottle and raised his eyebrow at her, but said nothing.
"Hans, do you have a newspaper?"
"It's in the recycling, Ma'am."
"Thanks."
Ten minutes later, the Senator from Maryland was interrupted in the middle of a slightly less than tasteful joke by a brick wrapped in paper flying through the front window. Claire stopped flitting back and forth and her outdoor self disappeared. Chaos ensued.
Politicians darted back and forth, someone yelled, and several people stumbled outside to find that no one was there.
Senator Jean Dumonde inspected up the brick that had flown through his window, "Claire, I thing youshould shee this," his speech was slightly slurred.
In his hand he held a message made from letters cut out from a newspaper. It read, "MeN with fAmiliEs to pRotect ShoUldn't vote fOR billS tHat piSS oFf powerFUl people... OR PeOple wITh poWerS."
Claire's eyes widened, and she hastily shoved the note back toward her husband, "The party is over, y'all better head home," she announced.
Tuesday:
Katrina woke up late the next morning. Something seemed out of place, then she realized that it was after nine in the morning and no one had woken her up for school. She rubbed her eyes and opened the door to her bedroom. Her parents were discussing something downstairs in loud tones. Still puzzled about not being in pajamas instead of math class, Katrina decided to interrupt them.
She followed the voices to the study and heard her mother say, "We need to protect her at all costs."
Her father responded "Isn't it a little hasty to go rushing into..."
Katrina pushed open the door and her father trailed off. Both her parents
looked like they hadn't slept.
"What's going on?" Katrina asked, certain that the answer had something to do with her and that she wouldn't like it much.
"Honey," her father began, "last night someone threw a brick through our window and left a threatening note. Your mother..."
"Thinks you might be in danger. Your father apparently has made some enemies by supporting the Mutant Registration Act and now someone is threatening our family."
Katrina had been right, she didn't like it, "What about it? Can't the police do
something?"
"We've called them, they think it was some prankster," her father responded.
"I don't want to take any chances," her mother interrupted. She turned back to her husband, "We can't trust the school to protect her, they'll let anyone in there. She should be at a school with others like her, somewhere selective and safe."
"Sounds like a prison," Katrina broke in. She didn't like being ignored, especially when she was the subject in question.
Her mother ignored her any way, "I stayed up doing research and I think I've found a place. New York, private boarding school, selective, and when things settle down, she can come home for weekends. It's called Xavier's Sister School for Talented Youth, and they have an excellent reputation."
Katrina could feel her anger rising, "Don't I get to have a say in his? It's my life!"
"You are our daughter and we will decide what is best for you." It was a classic father line, as was his next. "If it's a boarding school, do they at least have separate dormitories for boys and girls?"
"They do," her mother responded.
...
And that was how Katrina ended up in the back of a limousine heading toward the big apple sitting next to the big jerk formerly known as mother. Katrina hadn't spoken to anyone since that morning when her parents, or rather the big jerk and the bigger jerk, had decided to wrench her out of her nice normal life like a dandelion out of a garden and throw her into the compost heap that was New York City.
She had never been to New York before, and under other circumstances,
would have been excited to visit. As it was, she wanted nothing to do with the city that was ruining her life, just as she had wanted nothing to do with packing her suitcases or eating breakfast or getting dressed or anything that had to do with leaving her home and her friends and her life. In fact, she would have still been in her pajamas had Hans not offered to dress her if she didn't want to dress herself. After that she hastily dressed herself. And she packed her own suitcase when her father offered to let her go without packing
anything. And she ate breakfast when her stomach started rumbling. But she hadn't been happy about it.
"Umm." Her mother spoke, breaking the uncomfortable silence. She must be worried that I'll never speak to her again, Katrina thought, or she'd never say anything as un-eloquent as "umm". Katrina continued staring out the window. "I need to explain something to you. I couldn't tell you in front of your father. You don't have to say anything, just listen. I hope you can forgive me for... for not telling you sooner. I never should have kept it a secret for so long
and I never imagined telling you this way. I... umm... you and I are both... mutants."
"WHAT?!" Katrina forgot her vow of silence in her shock. "I'm not... you're not... how can I be? It's not possible. What about Dad? I thought he hated mutants. Will he hate me now? How can you tell? Are you sure?" Katrina's voice was shaking.
"I know because last night at the party I saw your dream. Only a mutant could have made me see purple elephants fly around." Katrina's eyes widened and filled with tears. Her mother continued. "Most mutants' powers don't manifest themselves until puberty, and you've reached that age. You're growing up."
Katrina couldn't hold back her tears any longer. "I don't want to grow up," she sobbed as she threw her arms around her mother.
...
Katrina sniffed as she lay with her head in her mothers lap. She felt much better now after having vented all of her frustrations about the previous day, everything from leaving behind her friends to time wasted on math homework that would never be turned in. For now she was comfortable just lying there with her mother stroking her hair. "Mom? Tell me a story about when you were my age? How did you find out you were a mutant?"
Her mother smiled and began the story.
They two spent the next several hours exchanging stories, imagining things they could do with their powers, and generally chatting away like girlfriends so that one could hardly believe they had started the car ride with one of the two not speaking to the other one.
...
Around supper time, as Katrina's stomach informed her, they arrived in New York City. She couldn't help but paste her self to the window, trying to see everything. It was much bigger than she had thought it would be.
"Now, New York is a very big city, so I want you to be extra careful," her mother was saying. "Don't leave the school grounds by yourself. Don't carry a lot of money with you. And Katrina, this is serious," Katrina turned away from the skyscrapers and looked at her, "I want you to practice using your
powers. This is a dangerous time not to have absolute control over what you can do. That new registration law... I don't think you want to be registered, so don't use your powers outside of the school. And if anyone comes after you... remember that if you can make people see things that aren't there, you might be able to make them not see something that is there."
Katrina's mother pulled her into a tight hug just as the limousine was pulling to a stop. Hans opened the door for them and Katrina stepped out into a whole new world from the one she had woken up in that morning.
