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Name: Kathryn Jane Hertzler
Nickname || Alias: Katie;; Kat
Codename: Kathryn Draconna;; Draconna
Picture: N/A
Age/Birthdate: 23; March 8th, 1984
Gender: Female
Height: 5' 6"
Weight: 120lbs. (only because of hollow bones)
Eye Color: Hazel, though her driver's license says Green
Hair Color: Dark brown with rusty-colored natural highlights
Complexion: Pale Caucasian with a light sprinkling of freckles
General Appearance:Kathryn's oval face is usually bare of any makeup, and her brown freckles under the eyes and along the nose bridge are usually hidden under the purple of too little sleep. Most times her hair is kept back from her face in a tight ponytail that always seems to have a few wisps escaping it, unless it's gelled in place. Glass-lensed, irodecant-framed glasses sit low on the girl's nose, especially when she's hunched over her work. Her cloths are an odd array of things, ranging from bright colors and 60's cuts, to basic black and very Goth. But in spite of that her appearance still gives the feel of a geekish techno girl.
Resembles: Melanie Lynskey
Powers:
Aura Reading-- Kathryn can read the auras of people around her. It has taken some years of practice to be good at this, but it has also lead to an ease of two things. One is being able to judge and even to some extent feel another's emotions. She isn't ALWAYS spot on, but then who is? Some people's aura's are just different than others for some signals, so you can't always be right. She can also do this with animals but it is even harder to do just because animals' patterns are so different than people. Basically what Kathryn does is feels, and to some extent see, their body's electromagnetic fields, and subconsciously picks up the smallest body language signals (this last is a conditioning thing developed to survive before she was a mutant) The ability that Kathryn has to pick up the electromagnetic signals also makes her very easy for telepaths to send to, sometimes without actually trying, but does not give her the ability to send her thoughts to others or to pick up the actual thoughts of non-telepaths or telepaths that are not to some degree projecting their thoughts.
Advanced/magnified Reiki-like healing-- Kathryn can heal others if she wishes. But as implied by "if she wishes" she controls this ability to some extent. It takes a lot of energy out of her and will make her weaker proportionately to the injuries that she heals. This ability also relies on the aura, so what energy she uses to heal another will be taken out of her own body's electromagnetic field. The more extensive the healing the more extensive her energy drain. This is the concept of Reiki, using energy to speed healing of others, but hers is greatly magnified. She can NOT bring someone back from the edge of death, it would kill her. However, she can stabilize someone who is dying and try to stem the flow of energy from the body. Simply put, Kathryn helps others to heal themselves. Like her other ability she can use it on animals as well, but she hardly ever has. Again, more complicated because of the difference between her species and theirs. One of the nice things about this ability is that Kathryn's aura is "bigger"and "denser" than a normal person's to give her more to use, but it's still not an unlimited supply.
Pale, almost green-colored, dragon-like wings/hollow bones-- Semi-hard and scaly looking, these wings are actually covered in skin, but it' doesn't look that way. The feel of it is leathery and almost rough. The span is a good 6 yards. She can use these wings and the hollow bones to fly/glide. Kathryn has a great amount of maneuverability in the air and a wonderful amount of grace now that she has the hang of her new ability. This last was not natural to Kathryn by any means. Her DNA as it WAS had nothing in it for this. But the government sometimes does funny things. What exactly the gene splicing was supposed to accomplish, and why it was even done in the first place to this rather unremarkable young woman, is all highly classified and supposedly top secret. (see history for farther details)
Limits:
Aura Reading is limited by the understanding Kathryn has of the individual she is reading and is much harder to do on animals. Even on a person that she is around all the time, Kathryn is not always right on an aura reading.
The Healing is limiting in a few ways. First of all, the extra energy in her aura makes her show up better on any type of scanning system that is made to follow body heat/electromagnetic fields. Hiding from the government becomes rather difficult for her. Another is that she often feels overly warm in crowds, more so than others, or closed spaces. The greatest draw back, though, is that she cannot use it on herself. So when she uses her aura to heal, she has to take the time to actually rest to regain it.
Kathryn's wings make blending in very hard for her.
Side-Effects:
Here in lies the fun for poor Kathryn. Because she can to some extent physically see the auras she reads, she is light sensitive. It's not unbearable, but lets say, more like uncomfortable. She would rather not be in really bright lights just because it's more effort than it's really worth. The energy that is light plays with her eyes and makes seeing even normal physical things an effort sometimes.
The gene splicing that lead to Kathryn's wings caused some major problems for her at first. First was the fact that her body did NOT like the changes. Making all of them was a very painful and long process and not one that she would have survived without help. With a year or so worth of help from government given drugs, and other healers, her body has balanced itself out and accepted the changes, but it will never be as healthily plump, as she put it, as it once was. Her back for some time felt strain and even pain from the "dead weight" now riding on it, but have adapted to this. Her muscles in the shoulders had to be restrengthend to make them as strong now that she has the extra appendages sticking out right below the shoulder blades as they had been before. And it took a lot of work for her to build up the strength again.
Lineage:
Kathryn is the first person of her abilites of her family's line. Her mother or father might have carried the genetics but if either of them did it was not in any form that could be used.
Battle Strengths:
--Stability, Kathryn does not lose herself in bloodlust. She will mostly shut down her emotions when she has to fight. But she only does what is necessary. If she doesn't have to, she won't kill or even harm another.
--Anatomical knowledge, She knows the best places to hit to take a person out of the fight. Pressure points are great for disabling someone, as are taking out the muscles that control hand functions if a weapon needs to be eliminated.
--Teamwork, Kathryn knows the value of teamwork and will do her best to learn how to work and even fight well with others as a unit.
Battle Weaknesses:
--Bright lights, Anytime she is in bright lighting, Kathryn will wince to some extent. This limits her eyesight and her focus on what's around her.
--Over stimulated senses, Her constant watching body language can and often does become a distraction. This can cost her valuable time and energy getting her head back in the game.
--Wings, They are rather large and slow down movements marginally, making up for the lighter weight of her bones, so that she isn't the fastest person. This opens Kathryn up to attacks from much smaller/faster opponents. And also make rather good targets.
Place of Birth: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA, Earth
Place of Residence: None, wanderer
Nationality: American, German-stock
History:
Childhood:
Born Kathryn Jane Herzler, in central Pennsylvania, Draconna was a little brat in her early life. "I want" was a common phrase from the girl once she learned to speak. Her parents didn't give her everything by any means, but an overly indulgent grandmother made eliminating this bad habit take quite some time. She had only one sibling, and older brother whom she often referred to as "strange" but she loved him dearly. When they were young, he tormented her to no end, making fun of her just to listen to her yell, but as they got older, this taught her not to take it personally. Kathryn seemed to easily make CLOSE friends but was rather shy at first. Her parents spent quite a bit of time pushing her out with the other kids at family functions to teach her that she could not hide from the world, no matter what. Once she got over her shyness, she quickly became the teacher's pet and yet very well liked for her friendly personality. Her childhood was filled with much conditioning and love, until she neared puberty.
At 10, Draconna learned the hardest and most cruel lesson any child can face. She learned that everyone has flaws. Due to the side effects of medication her father was on, Draconna's father molested the girl. The medication he was on took away the usual paralysis that comes when in deep sleep. And as most men, what he dreamed of was sexual in nature. Luckily, her father's desires stayed more toward the pre-show side of things. She escaped the events of the next few years without being completely "ruined." It took into her adolescence before Kathryn's parents actually became aware of the medication's adverse effects and things were "corrected" for the most part. This abuse was what lead to her subconscious picking up on body language overly well.
Adolescence:
The terrors of home only made it harder to think of herself as acceptable to others, but a few good friends made it impossible for her to shut down completely from the world. Kathryn's studies had always been a strong point as she didn't have to try much to get good grades, but as the emotional tug-of-war raged in her mind, her studies only suffered some. She was so good at BSing papers and understanding what was explained to her in class that even though her studying went down the drain, she still only dropped her grades to mid "B" low "A" range.
Draconna's true reason for surviving the depression that assaulted her through her most confusing identity years was reading and writing. When all else failed, she would just lose herself in a book or writing her own little world. Teachers never thought of her as having something truly terrible in her home life because the girl seemed so mature for her age. She read in class, yes, but she still pulled good grades and could hold a decent and intelligent conversation on the subjects she took in school. She read just about anything at one time or another but her true passion was Science Fiction and Fantasy and that was readily reflected in most of her writing.
She devoured the books her school library had and moved onto buying her own, and raiding other public libraries close by. But soon her interests caught on something else. Fiction works and mythology got her logical mind to wondering, "If there were so many myths of magic before and so many stories of it now, maybe there was once, or still is something similar in existence?" A few Physics books later, she was determined that there must be something out there, so she started researching Pagan faiths of all sorts.
Maturity:
Before Kathryn graduated, she was working and had already started college classes. She would've liked to have been an author, or done something artistic, since she was so good at crafts (determination to learn what her aunts had to teach her was all it took), but instead she started a coursework in Computer Science and Programming. She kept researching religion in her spare time, on a mission to find herself, and worked at a local craft store, which lead to more knowledge of crafts of all sorts. The spring of '03 she graduated from high school.
She got out in the world more in the next two months or so. Kathryn discovered a New Age store near where she worked and found that she liked spending time talking with the owner to get recommendations for what books and information was the most accurate. A small stone collection started to form in the girl's possession along with rune stones and other decidedly Pagan things finding their way into her heart. But she still claimed the religion of her family, Christianity.
By the end of the summer of '03, Kathryn was going full time at college and working part time at the craft store. Her personal life bounced from good to bad as she had still not completely defeated her depression. Late nights chatting online found her many times in tears over fights she was having with a few of her Christian friends. She was discovering more and more that she wasn't quite the same "Christian" that she once was, and some of her friends accepted it, some didn't. Those that didn't fed her depression, by pointing out and attacking her positions on things.
She hung onto her old religion very precariously and soon found herself wondering if it really fit her. She quit focusing so much on hanging onto what was expected of her and what she was told to do and started truly looking at who she was. She got involved with a Druid and the fighting persisted with a few of her "friends." She went separate ways from the Druid, and still the fighting got worse. Then one day as she was reading a Pagan book, it hit her. This was her. All those thing she believed that she kept trying to explain to her friends, they weren't Christian ideals, they were Pagan. And so she stopped calling herself Christian and being "cautious" about what she would try out from the books she read.
By the spring of '04, Draconna was learning to "Cast" and other such things and discovered something very odd when she did. The healing exercises that they were trying to "learn" she didn't have to learn. She could just DO it. If she put her mind to it, she could take away pain. At first it wasn't that much, but the more she learned the control that Wicca taught the more she found she could do. Some of the Wiccans she knew started to look at her funny and whispers of Mutant started to flow, but most of them were not said badly. To them it was quite fine for one of their "family" to be a mutant.
Those who taught her encouraged her to go beyond the hurt and depression that resulted from it, to work through it. And with the personal growth, her powers opened up more and her control of them was better for her training. She still had to practice with them, but at least she knew how to start from her Wiccan training. Her training was made easier by having a good friend to work with in a fiery-haired fellow witch a few years younger than herself. When she needed someone to practice with, she always had a willing partner in "Matches." So Draconna soon was well on her way to being a wonderful witch and a very controlled person.
By April of '05, Kathryn finished her college work and came out with an Associates Degree in Computer Science and Programming. She caught a lucky break and managed to get a job in New York City for a programming firm, helping to code computer applications. It was decent money, and she was pretty well liked, even if she did get a little guarded with people sometimes. But all was never good with Draconna. She just couldn't seem to keep her personal life sorted. She was always so lonely, and never seemed to be able to find a guy to stay with.
Kathryn worked, went home to her new apartment, and went to visit family from time to time, nothing really major, or so one would think. Kathryn was doing pretty good or as good as you can with a government breathing down your neck, when she got taken. It seemed the government had pegged her a as a person of interest for her abilites. She happened not to be a very hard to take, venturing out for the groceries and such as she did. The rest got a little complicated.
The government has a lot of classified and "top secret" documents on the crap that they did to Kathryn, but really it's just a lot of fluff paper work to cover up the fact that they don't know jack. The truth behind it though is simple. The Government screwed up, and Kathryn was just unlucky. She happened to catch the eye of some of the lab nuts, err scientists when she was taken in by the government. The group of scientists were just playing with DNA combinations and splicing them to the existing DNA that Kathryn had. They don't even know exactly how they managed to decide on this particular combination. And the only reason that Kathryn survived it was with massive help from other people with healing abilities that were in the government's "programs."
Kathryn's luck, whether you call it good or bad, landed her as the lab's new toy. She was cut apart, left to heal, and cut apart again, so many times it became just a blur to her. She usually didn't scream though, instead shutting down her conscious mind to the point that nothing seemed to get to her. Oh she felt it all, but she just managed to make it that she didn't have the control over herself physically anymore, so she COULDN'T scream. Besides, screaming was a waste of her energy. Once the dissecting was done enough that they knew where every little bone, tendon and such went in Kathryn's body, she was set to healing completely and being studied in other ways. One of the lab personnel in particular has taken a keen interest in the draggy-girl that they made. Angela wouldn't let anyone else so much as touch her little pet.
But that was all a while ago now. Kathryn managed to escape and is now just wandering a bit. Whereever she ends up, she does not really care. She will do what she has to survive and find somewhere out of her government's reach to settle. You never know just where she might turn up. Wormholes and magic portals are fun ways to travel after all. Maybe she will even make some new friends along the way.
Personality: Draconna enjoys life, and used to find an almost sadistic joy even in the company of her tormentors. After all that she's survived, especially at their hands, she has found that life is a precious thing and that all things all people are important. She may hate what they did to her, but she can't seem to do much more than pity the rather sick creatures that she sees them as. Loyalty is still the greatest part of her personality, whether to who she is or to those around her, this concept is ever influencing what she does. And it seemed to baffle some of the lab nuts to no end. But this loyalty was of great help getting out.
With people in general, but especially friends and family, Kathryn has always forced herself to be thoughtful even if she wishes to do something else at first. She has learned the hard way that getting mad and lashing out really doesn't do any good. Tolerance and a open mind are the things she values most in herself and others. How she managed to hang onto this after all the things that were done to her in her time at the lab, no body is quite sure. But we all know she's got a much more sarcastic edge to her voice, and while she might force herself to be calm, she can sure as heck give people a good biting comment or two while she's at it.
Though not as cheery now as she once was, Kathryn still has her quick wit and sharp tongue, and she uses them. Sometimes it is to make someone smile, usually one of the nicer people she meets, and others it is to remind them that they are not the only one's in this Universe. Whatever the reason, sarcasm always was her forte. Unfortunately the things done to her are always lurking just at the edge of Kathryn's mind, so it can be very difficult to keep herself in check these days.
Her fondest wish is that somehow she will find a place to settle down and be safe from the claws of those that seem fascinated with her abilties maybe even find someone that would be able to understand her rather fickle personality. For while she gives off the air of someone ever calm, tolerant, and purposeful, under the surface she still has her natural tenancy to jump from one thought to the next without any real pattern, and it would be nice if someone could always either follow it or accept it as being just fine. Her emotions always jump just as extremely. Yet, she has managed to hide these things from those around her, so that she can function without them interfering for the most part.
Likes:
Understanding (This would've been nice to have before the government came round after her...)
Discussing things (Best way to learn from or teach others, and leads to understanding)
Seeking knowledge (This is a good way to correct ignorance and grow personally)
Freedom (All people are due this and it is important they get their due, and she wanted hers a lot and got it)
Creating (No, not everyone is good at it... but we all should at least try)
Dislikes:
Intolerance (yeah... this got us where we are in the first place.)
Stupidity (common sense is given to us for a reason you know!)
Ignorance (this can and should be corrected)
The Government back home (The very idea of experimeting on your own citizens is just wrong)
Destruction (Haven't we learned yet?)
Fears:
Being stuck back on the tables again, and this time not surviving. Not the pain and torture she fears, it's the idea of dying among the government ijjits.
Small spaces, yup she's claustrophobic. Small spaces means anything under about oh, two inch clearance around her. She doesn't like being boxed in. Her aura makes her really hot really quickly in such confining space.
Something happening to the ones she cares about, whether new or old friends.
 Kathryn Dragonna · Wed Oct 10, 2007 @ 08:24pm · 0 Comments |
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