Raleigh Vivica Kerrigan was born on October 30th, 1991 in Little Rock, Arkansas to Lucy and William Kerrigan. She was the youngest of three children: Erika, who is six years older than she was and Jessica, three years older. Growing up, the war against mutants was already in its infancy. When she was three, the United States banned mutants from serving in the military. In 1999, Fell Peak, New Mexico becomes the first town in the Untied States to adopt anti-discrimination laws that serve to protect mutants.
Growing up, Rae had a normal childhood as far as childhoods go. Her parents were kind and loving to their daughters. They did not drink, do drugs or hit them, but offered them the best that they could in a world that was seemly changing around them. While her sisters pursued careers as a doctor and in politics, Rae dreamed of being an Olympic gymnast, eventually reaching the level of a world-class gymnast. She trained rigorously until she was eleven when she broke her leg in four places and shattered her knee while climbing a tree, effectively ending her dreams of the Olympics. A year later, her wounds healed fully though she decided not to return to her gymnastic roots, instead deciding to focus on her normal life.
After that, she withdrew into herself somewhat. She refused to come out of her room except to go to school, but that was it. She started to dress down more often than not. She became more sarcastic and pessimistic. Finally, her family managed to coax her out of her room and get out more. It was two years later when life decided to give Rae another cosmic beat down.
One night, she was at the movies with her friends to see the new action movie with some martial artist actor from China. After the movie, they were walking home when a group of men tried to rob them. Without thinking, Rae started to fight them off using the same techniques that she had just seen in the movie with the same grace and skill level as the actor was using. She didn’t have to think about it and it seemed to all come naturally. After dealing with the police, her parents naturally found out and seemed to be as confused as she was.
She seemed to be fine, but whenever she’d watch something on television, she’d be able to repeat the process flawlessly as if she had been doing it for years. Whether it was performing tricks on a skateboard, cooking gourmet meals, wrestling moves, or even building complex electronics. As long as she could find a video or something of it to watch, she would be able to do it though it would only last for a few hours. She started to fill her iPod with an assortment of videos instead of music so she’d always have videos if she needed it.
The more she used her abilities, the more she seemed to return to her normal self and the more she seemed to be enjoying life. She would also be able to retain the skills for longer periods of time the more she would use her power until she was able to retain them for a full month. She realized that she was only able to store up to ten different abilities before her mind would push out another one in order to make room in her brain. The more she used her abilities; she seemed to forget her memories from her childhood, then her young adult years. It seemed that every day, she would forget something about her past. It would usually be something from between two to three years in the past. As if her brain was a full hard drive and something had to be deleted in order for something else to be saved.
Despite her parent’s apprehension, she applied to the Arkansas State University and was accepted upon graduating from high school. She seemed to revert out of her old ways, opening up to the new experiences and friends. Thanks to her abilities, she made the varsity basketball team easily and excelled in her games. Though, no one else really understood why that was.
Her senior year, she was on Spring Break in California, enjoying herself when she hit her head on a submerged rock while diving into the ocean from a cliff. The impact to her head caused her usual memory loss to trigger, but instead of memories from two or three years ago being erased, the past four years were lost. She awoke in the hospital a few days later with no recollection of where she was from. Scared, she left the hospital without bothering to check out and attempted to figure out where she was from. Because her identification was left in her room, she had no idea where to begin. Unfortunately, she couldn’t remember where she was staying or where she lived, so she wandered the streets, staying in homeless shelters and where she could find a warm, dry place to sleep. She ended up with a group of mutants who took her in when one of them was able to detect her mutant gene.
Over the years, she had ran into a few telepathic mutants who tried to help, only to find that it was impossible to recover the lost memories. Her memories were completely wiped as if they never existed. In 2011, the Brotherhood of Mutants staged an attack on a gathering of diplomats in New York City, which kicked off the anti-mutant fever, helping Derek Simon become President the following year. This drew her to New York City, hoping to help fight against the mutant hatred movement. Xavier’s school after took her in running into one of their students on the streets. She’s been living at the school ever since as they’ve offered her a safe place to live, even working her way up to being a member of the X-Men. She began working as a gym instructor, using her abilities to help train the new recruits as well as helping out in the kitchen from time to time.
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