The Mayor's a chess piece guy. From Derse, so he was black, and by black I mean his shell was the color black like actual chess, I'm not here to make racial commentary today.

Anyway, Rose is...I guess the powers are hereditary, in a weird kind of way, but it's not like a gene coded in her mom's slime or anything, we all had weird powers by virtue of being who we are and just didn't discover them until we were older and under pressure so we sort of had to access them to survive.