Haroun al-Rashid

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Details

Character Journal: x_jetstream

Real Name: Haroun ibn Sallah al-Rashid

Codename: Jetstream

Aliases: None

First Appearance: May 31, 2003

Date of Birth: 15 August, 1979

Place of Birth: Marrakesh, Morocco

Citizenship: Moroccan

Relatives: Parents and extended family in Morocco; Alison Blaire (wife); Miles Blaire (stepson).

Education: Alumni of the ill-fated Massachusetts Academy; degree in Aeronautical Engineering.

Relationship Status: Married to Alison Blaire

Occupation: Instructor at the West Coast Annex

Team Affiliation: X-Men reservist

Biography

Childhood

Haroun grew up in a middle-class household in Marrakesh. His father was a businessman who had extensive ties to the French, while his mother was a traditional Muslim woman. He is an only child, thanks to an undiagnosed-at-the-time powers-flare during the birthing process. The backwash from his chemokinetic power scorched his mother's womb, making her barren and very nearly claiming her life. Only an emergency hystorectomy saved her life. Despite the rocky start, Haroun's parents gave him a good home life. He made friends easily, went through his schooling with good grades, and attended church with his family. His father's business was doing well, and he enrolled Haroun in an American school - Emma Frost's Massachusetts Academy. Haroun spent five years there, gaining a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering.

Jetstream

His power manifested early on (October) in his second year - Haroun used it to actually take flight for the first time, and in his exhilaration and excitement pushed his power past the point that his flesh could handle. He caught fire 150 feet up, and tumbled to the ground in a fiery tangle of limbs. He broke both his legs upon impact, damaged his spine, perforated his bowel, and suffered second and third-degree burns over 70% of his body. He was quickly rescued and taken to a private ward in the hospital, where the decision was made (once the chemical fire was put out) to amputate his legs in an effort to save the rest of him. He spent an entire month undergoing surgery after surgery to save his biologicals, kept unconscious via Emma's telepathic power to save him from the pain.

The cybernetics were Emma Frost's idea, a way to let Haroun have mobility and to preserve his life. Sebastian Shaw, the manufacturer of the hardware, saw many potential military uses in the Jetstream project, and donated the hardware for Emma's use. The initial graftings went very well, but the man-machine interface (MMI) turned out to be a very tricky matter indeed. Emma was charting unknown territory, and through deft hands, quick thinking, and some brilliant intuitive leaps, the MMI went online in March. The early design was crude, and was not sufficiently rugged to allow Haroun to walk. Using his power was firmly out of the question. By June, the software and hardware had been updated to the point where he could take slow shuffling steps in exquisite pain. By August, he could walk normally, and the pain was bearable in short timeframes. By the one-year anniversary of his accident, Haroun celebrated by walking around the entire campus without falling or collapsing from the pain. His academics suffered while he healed, but Emma paid for an additional year of schooling to mollify his frantic parents.

Haroun worked very, very hard to catch up with his peers. Late in his third year, Haroun went under the knife again, this time to install the SynthSkin over his plastic lower torso, and to install the vectored-thrust jetpack that would allow Haroun to fly again. After many stops-and-starts and extensive mental training from Emma in dealing with the new unfamiliar device, Haroun took off under his own power on October 1st.

His first power-related accident happened two weeks later. The system overloaded when he pushed it too far, but this time he was flying while carefully supervised, and another student flew to his rescue before he could re-enact his original powers accident. Haroun, once extinguished, went back under the knife as his hardware was revised again and again, to improve and refine the jetpack and to give his body greater tolerances for the enormous heat that his power generates.

He was inducted into the Hellions, a soceity of mutants on-campus that dabbled in mutant vigilante-ism. They masked themselves, took code-names, and never let it be known who they were as they did their good deeds. Their efforts earned them a sharp retort from Donald Pierce, himself a cyborg and the sufferer of multiple Hellion raids upon his business interests. Haroun graduated with honors, and then went back to Morocco to start to build a life for himself in his father's company. While he was away, Donald Pierce struck - murdering all of the remaining Hellions and causing millions of dollars in damage to the Massachusetts Academy facility.

Haroun was devestated to learn of his friends' deaths, and swore an oath before Allah that he would never let anything like that happen again. He quit his job at his father's company, kissed both his parents goodbye, and went underground. He worked tirelessly to save other mutants - from fanatics, from their own confused and enraged parents, from a soceity that was not prepared to deal with what they represented.

Return to America

In May 2003, Haroun travelled back to America when a fanatical mutant damaged the cybernetics in his legs. Emma Frost was kind enough to repair the damage, install the latest version of the software that controlled his cybernetic parts, and provide him a place to stay while he recovered and trained with the new capabilities - her new place of employment, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Haroun made some friends, predominantly Lorna Dane and Rahne Sinclair, and assisted the Flight class.

However, his spat with Jono Starsmore and his brawl with student Sarah Morlocke led to his invitation to leave, and in November 2003, Haroun flew back to Morocco to continue his work there.

Exile

Unfortunately, while he was away his enemies were busy laying the groundwork to deal with him once and for all. A government crackdown nearly led to his arrest, trial, and murder, but Haroun was able to slip the dragnet before the police could find and arrest him. Marrakesh, the city of his birth, the city that he called home, had sent him a message. He was unwanted there.

With nowhere else to go, Haroun sought permission from Charles Xavier to return to the mansion, despite Emma's departure and his own past record there. Charles agreed, and in July 2004 Haroun returned to the school, as teacher of Arabic and Flight and as a full member of the X-Men. His second stay proved more productive than the first; with Sarah having left, much of the previous conflict was avoided, although he still proved unsympathetic to Jono's control issues. Initially known as a flirt, he began a serious relationship with Alison Blaire in October 2004, which eventually led to marriage. He also made several new friends, including Dr. Madelyn Bartlet and Nathan Dayspring. He proved less successful as a teacher than he was an X-Man; uncompromising and unwilling to cater to what he saw as the whims of spoiled Westerner students, he was a hard taskmaster and clashed frequently with Nathan on that and many other subjects.

Disaster almost struck in August 2005, when Haroun was severely injured during a battle with Omega Red whilst the X-Men were protecting a sleeper agent by the name of David North. His cybernetics damaged beyond repair and his biologicals infected with Omega Red's deathspore, it took the concerted efforts of the medlab team, the resident technical wizards (Forge, Doug, Paige and Kitty) and some breaking-and-entering on the part of Alison and Cain in order to upgrade Haroun's already-outdated cyberware and save his life. In the course of the surgery, Dr. Jonathan Hawksmoor who had been on the original design team for the Jetstream project revealed that Haroun's 'ware had been a combat prototype, never intended to be used in a civilian setting, thus revealing the cause of the increased testosterone rushes to Haroun's system and the problems those had been causing for him.

The new 'ware proved to be difficult to adapt to, and it was several weeks before Haroun was able to walk, and even longer before he was able to fly. Overall it was an improvement - Forge's design, using the Reavers technology he had gleaned from the remains left after the attack, gave Haroun increased sensation and movement, as well as correcting a certain 'defecit' caused by his original accident.

Further Information

In April 2006, Alison and Haroun eloped, and then shortly after that moved to California to set up the West Coast Annex.

Physical Characteristics

Height: 5' 8"

Weight: 188 lbs

Eyes: Black

Hair: Black - normally shaved off

Other Features: From the waist down, Haroun is cybernetic. Before his 2005 reconstruction, he also had a small jetpack that would extend from his back.

Powers

Haroun's mutant ability is chemokinetic flight. His top theoretical speed is Mach 2, but anything much past the sound barrier causes him damage, and very well might kill him. Haroun's mutation is maladaptive - he has no protection from the heat of the chemical reactions that power his flight.

Haroun has no defense whatsoever against windshear, the stresses of flight, or against the heat his own power produces. The cybernetics remove the last problem (up to a point, the current Jetstream design still pushes the danger zone after Mach 1 is reached). He has to wear protective clothing and goggles if he wishes to fly quickly and remain undamaged. His oxygen needs are supplied by his own lungs augmented by the thruster-pack's own intakes while in flight.

Equipment

Haroun's legs, much of his pelvis, and the base of his spine are all artificial, as is an integrated thruster-pack that provides a safe and non-flammatory way for his power to express itself. All of his cybernetic parts are bonded to his body via Shaw Cybernetics hardware being run by Frost Enterprises software. The cybernetics are covered by a layer of SynthSkin (tm, patent pending) that has been grown and altered to match his original skintone as closely as possible. However, the SynthSkin does not tan, nor does it grow hair.

At the base of his spine (internally) sits a reinforced junction box that houses the MMI - the Man-Machine Interface. This is the crititcal area that ties the cybernetics in to his meat nervous system and allows him to use his legs at all. If the MMI crashes or is damaged, Haroun is immediately paralyzed, and cannot (if not flying) use his power. If he is in flight when the MMI crashes, then the thruster-pack goes offline immediately and Haroun's mutation, depending on speed and output at the time of the MMI failure, may burn him. Theoretically, the MMI junction box could allow him to wire other devices into his nervous system, but this functionality has never been tested, and there is no guarantee that the software would be able to handle the new neural mappings. Outside of the flightpack and the software to run his legs and maintain his balance, the only other device wired into the MMI is last-ditch emergency transmitter - a panicbutton of sorts, designed to activate if Haroun's vitals fall below a certain preprogrammed level.

Haroun has no natural genitalia at all - they were too badly damaged to salvage in the initial crash that crippled him. Instead, up until his upgrade, he had a prosthetic for waste removal, and an internal doctor-servicable resevoir of hormones that provided his body with the testosterone and other chemicals his body needs in order to function properly.

Trivia

Haroun is chronically allergic to cats, a condition Catseye gleefully exploited.

Plots

2004

Trojan Horse

Blaze of Glory

2005

Lost and Found

Thermopylae

Maverick (plot)

Upgrade

Bad Blood

2006

Trinity

House of Wind

X-Men Mission: Trans-Siberian Hustle

X-Men Mission: Nimrod

X-Men Mission: Sangue Puro

X-Men Mission: Ricochet

X-Men Mission: A Mirror Darkly

X-Men Mission: Loose Ends

Meta

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Meta Trivia

Formerly played by Redhawk