Cassandra Nova
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Cassandra Nova is a fictional enemy of the X-Men in the Marvel Comics universe. Created by writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely, Cassandra first appeared in New X-Men #114 (July 2001).
Cassandra is a "mummudrai," a parasitic life form born bodiless on the astral plane. The mummudrai that became Cassandra became telepathically entangled with the future Charles Xavier, who possesses vast mutant telepathic powers. This granted Cassandra some psionic powers herself, including the ability to exit the womb and create a body.
Cassandra is Xavier's ideological dark shadow, bent on destruction and genocide. She is most infamous for commanding an army of Sentinels to massacre 16 million mutants within the mutant "homeland" of Genosha.
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[edit] Character biography
[edit] Origins
Cassandra Nova began life at the same time as Charles Xavier. Conceived without a body; Cassandra improvised one by copying Xavier's DNA to make her own body, effectively becoming his twin sister. She grew with her brother until the time when Charles sensed her monstrous thoughts. Charles attempted to kill the creature, resulting in its physical body being stillborn. Despite this, the creature survived as chaotic cellular matter and clung to a sewer wall for decades, rebuilding its physical form and perfecting its effort to mimic human traits. During this time, she grew convinced that the womb in which she had fought Charles and the universe she now inhabited were one and the same, a universe in which only Charles and she were real, and that her purpose was to destroy every illusion Charles held dear: his dream, his X-Men and his beloved Lilandra.
Jean Grey later discovered that Cassandra Nova is the mummudrai (from a Shi'ar legend, meaning opposite) of Charles Xavier. "Legend says each of us faces our own personal mummudrai in the womb, shortly before birth - it is our first experience of the alien, the other, the different". In reality, the mummudrai are a parasitic species born bodiless on the astral plane, and it was only through becoming entangled with Charles Xavier's developing telepathic mind that Cassandra Nova created a body for herself.
[edit] Genocide
After she was able to rebuild herself, Cassandra returned with a vengeance. She convinced the last living relative of Bolivar Trask, Donald Trask III, to activate a pair of enormous wild Sentinels and send them to destroy the mutant homeland of Genosha, killing 16 million mutants. Cassandra duplicated Trask's DNA so she could also issue orders to the Sentinels, programmed to obey only those with the DNA of a Trask. Cassandra infected her own body with millions of nanosentinels just as she was captured by Cyclops and Wolverine.
Cassandra was taken to the X-Mansion, where she broke free and defeated most of the X-Men easily. Cassandra then put herself into Xavier's machine Cerebra (an enhanced version of Cerebro) and switched minds with her brother before Emma Frost snapped Cassandra's neck (Emma had been in Genosha teaching during the attack and witnessed her students massacred). Trapped in Cassandra's broken body, Xavier was unable to warn the X-Men before Cassandra, now in Xavier's body, shot him.
[edit] Imperial
Now in Xavier's body, Cassandra mentally forced the Xavier Institute student Beak to beat Beast into a coma after he discovered that Xavier and Cassandra shared the same DNA. Cassandra Nova then contacted the Shi'ar, whose leader was Majestrix Lilandra, Xavier's lover. Cassandra manipulated the Shi'ar Imperium, driving Lilandra insane and using her to make the Shi'ar Imperial fleet destroy the empire. Cassandra also made Lilandra send the Shi'ar Imperial Guard to wipe out the mutant population of Earth, starting with the X-Men. The Guard fought the X-Men until they were able to show the truth to the Imperial Guard.
Angered at Cassandra's treachery and realizing the danger she posed, the Imperial Guard fought Cassandra, who defeated them and headed into the mansion. She had planned on using Cerebra to eliminate all mutants. However, Jean Grey (who was becoming increasingly more powerful due to a manifestation of the Phoenix entity) was able to split Xavier's consciousness into pieces and store a little part of him in every single living mutant mind. When Cassandra used Cerebra and focused on all the mutants, the pieces of Xavier's mind were brought back together; at the same time, Jean Grey telephatically attacked the Immensity, and both of them were able to force Cassandra out of his body.
Without a body, Cassandra became pure psychic energy, bodiless and blind. Emma Frost tricked Cassandra into returning to what appeared to be her old body, which was in reality the alien polymorph "Stuff."
Cassandra's essence entered the body and was locked into a self-repeating program in the synthetic brain.
[edit] Ernst
"Planet X" hinted and "Here Comes Tomorrow" directly stated that Cassandra had taken the form of the young mutant Ernst, a diminutive, old-looking little girl with superhuman strength who was placed among Xorn's Special Class and later became a member of his Brotherhood of Mutants. Chuck Austen, who followed Morrison on New X-Men was criticized for, among other things, disregarding elements of Morrison's stories. In Austen's New X-Men #156, Cyclops and Beast investigate Cassandra's containment unit following the destruction of the mansion, only to find it empty.
[edit] Hellfire
Cassandra, back in her original form, returned in the "Danger" story arc of Astonishing X-Men, alongside Sebastian Shaw of the Hellfire Club. During this arc it was implied that Frost's survival of the destruction of Genosha in New X-Men #115 was due to Cassandra Nova creating Frost's secondary mutation. In exchange, Emma was to assist Nova as part of a scheme to infiltrate the X-Men as a sleeper agent (Nova having erased the memory of their encounter at the time). However, it has yet to be stated whether this was real or a creation by Emma.
This infiltration occurred when Emma tricked Cassandra into entering Stuff's body: Cassandra managed to plant a seed of her consciousness into Emma's brain. She then played up on Emma's survivor guilt over not perishing during the Genosha massacre and also her general guilt over her past life as the villianious White Queen in the Hellfire Club. Cassandra's influence resulted in Emma creating manifestations of Cassandra in her human form, Sebastian Shaw, Emma's younger self as the White Queen (calling herself "Perfection"), and Negasonic Teenage Warhead, a former student of Emma's who was killed in Genosha. Emma and these manifestations then proceeded to attack the X-men; Beast was reduced to a feral animal, Wolverine became a timid child (with a humorously antiquated vocabulary), and Cyclops lost the use of his powers and was rendered comatose.
Meanwhile, Emma/Cassandra subjected Kitty Pride to a cruel dystopic vision that tricked her into using her phasing powers to open the containment chamber where Cassandra, trapped in Stuff's form, had been imprisoned. Afterwards, Kitty was to murder Frost and the rest of the X-men, as Nova's permanent host. Cassandra's plans were foiled by a revived Cyclops, and other students at the Xavier Institute (including Blindfold and Hisako Ichiki). Emma also rebelled against Cassandra's influence and attempted to have Kitty kill her in the hopes that this would thwart Cassandra's plans. Admitting that Kitty was too much of a challenge, Cassandra then attempted to transfer her mind into Hisako, but was interrupted when everyone present was teleported away by S.W.O.R.D.. It is unknown if Cassandra's possession of Hisako was successful, though the art indicates some sort of energy transference between the two.
[edit] Alternate versions
[edit] Here Comes Tomorrow
In the Here Comes Tomorrow future timeline, Cassandra's reeducation under the form of Ernst was a complete success; she had embraced Xavier's dream and was now Headmistress of the Xavier Institute. Instead of simply going by the name of Cassandra Nova, she added the Xavier surname to her own, now calling herself Cassandra Nova Xavier. Alongside Wolverine, the The three remaining Stepford Cuckoos now calling themselves, the Three-in-One, Beaks' grandson Tito Jr, E.V.A. and No-Girl (Martha Johansson), Cassandra became one of the X-Men, fighting against Sublime and its armies of Crawlers, led by Apollyon. Cassandra was destroyed by Sublime after it unleashed Phoenix on the X-Men.
However, this timeline diverged from Earth-616 when Jean Grey reached back and psychically forced Cyclops to accept Emma's offer to run the Xavier Institute together. In the current timeline, Cassandra remembered her original identity, though she seemingly kept the Ernst guise to remain at the Institute.
[edit] X-Men: The End
Cassandra factors prominently in the alternate future depicted in X-Men: The End storyline (Book 3). In this timeline she remains a villain.
[edit] Powers
The mummudrai are usually forced to fight with the mind of their host over a body. However, given the vast potential in Xavier's genome, Cassandra Nova is able to build her own body, mimicking human traits as best she can. Cassandra can also manipulate the DNA it has copied to act as a rapid healing factor or to phase through solid matter.
First using her DNA copying ability, she mimics Donald Trask III, a relative of Bolivar Trask, so that she can voice command the Sentinels, who obey the Trask family line, to attack Genosha.
After copying the DNA of Charles Xavier, the mummudrai Cassandra Nova accesses the full spectrum of latent mutant functions in his genome (she has the powers of Charles Xavier, the ones he could have and the ones he might receive as a result of latent mutation), granting itself vast psionic powers.[citation needed] These powers include: telepathy, telekinesis, and the ability to release an astral form, which she focuses both her telepathy and telekinesis. She has all the powers of the "average" mummudrai as well, which include the latter explanation.
As Ernst, Cassandra does not display any of the abilities she originally had, only superhuman strength. Because Cassandra inhabits the body of the Shi'ar Superguardian Stuff, which can mimic not only the form but the DNA of any being, Cassandra should be capable of regaining both her hard and soft psionic powers.
[edit] External links
Categories: Articles with unsourced statements | X-Men villains | Brotherhood of Mutants members | Hellfire Club members | Fictional mass murderers | Marvel Comics mutants | The 198 Files | Fictional characters with the power of accelerated healing | Fictional characters with the power to shapeshift | Fictional characters with telekinesis | Fictional telepaths | Fictional twins
