Difference between revisions of "Jean-Paul Beaubier"

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{{Application Received}}
 
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{{Contact The Mods}}
 
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{{Unplayed Character}}
 
 
{{PCInfobox
 
{{PCInfobox
 
| name    = Jean-Paul Beaubier
 
| name    = Jean-Paul Beaubier
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| image  = northstar.jpg
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| image  = northstar.png
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| pb = [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0553648/ Olivier Martinez]
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| pb = [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1334869/ Logan Marshall-Green]
 
| codename = Northstar
 
| codename = Northstar
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| teams  = [[Xavier Institute]] - Staff
+
| teams  = none
 
| birthdate = May 26, 1970
 
| birthdate = May 26, 1970
 
| journal =  [http://x-quebecois.livejournal.com/profile x_quebecois]
 
| journal =  [http://x-quebecois.livejournal.com/profile x_quebecois]
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| player = Available for applications
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| player = [[Cai]]
 
}}
 
}}
  
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'''Relatives''': Jean-Baptiste Beaubier (father, deceased), Melisande Beaubier (mother, deceased), Louis Martin (adopted father, deceased), Jolie Martin (adopted mother, deceased), Raymonde Belmonde (father-figure/mentor, deceased), [[Jeanne-Marie Beaubier]] (twin sister)
 
'''Relatives''': Jean-Baptiste Beaubier (father, deceased), Melisande Beaubier (mother, deceased), Louis Martin (adopted father, deceased), Jolie Martin (adopted mother, deceased), Raymonde Belmonde (father-figure/mentor, deceased), [[Jeanne-Marie Beaubier]] (twin sister)
  
−
'''Education''': Degrees in Literature and History  
+
'''Education''': Undergraduate degree of English Studies and Comparative Literature from Université de Montréal and a Masters degree in Comparative Literature from the same. He also has a minor in History, specifically French Canadian, that he received credit for whilst earning his undergraduate degree. 
  
 
'''Relationship Status''': Single
 
'''Relationship Status''': Single
  
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'''Occupation''': Teacher
+
'''Occupation''': None currently. Formerly a professor at [[Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters]].
  
 
'''Team Affiliation''': Former member of [[Alpha Flight]], former member of the [[X-Men]].
 
'''Team Affiliation''': Former member of [[Alpha Flight]], former member of the [[X-Men]].
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=== '''Childhood''' ===
 
=== '''Childhood''' ===
  
−
Jean-Paul was twice-orphaned at a young age, once at age two when his birth parents died in an automobile accident, then again at five when the Martins, relations of his mother who had taken him in, met the same fate. Jean-Paul was quickly adopted, but, as the traumatized boy was not a demonstrative or loving child and prone to acting out, he was quickly given up from his first family, and passed on to others who were no better equipped to deal with the troublesome boy than their predecessors had been. Jean-Paul's behavior grew worse as he grew older, progressing from cold distance to outright disrespect and rebellion against his foster parents. At thirteen years old, after a violent confrontation with his current fosters, he finally ran away. He spent almost three months scratching out a living on the streets of Montreal. His days were spent picking pockets, scrounging from dumpsters, and stealing from vendors to live, his nights sleeping in the doorways of shops or in alleys or abandoned buildings, always looking over his shoulder and desperately lonely, though he would not have admitted to it under any circumstances. To make matters worse, it was at this time that Jean-Paul's mutation began to assert itself, making the boy somewhat quicker on his feet than most, but also bringing with it an increased metabolism that caused the boy to slowly starve on a diet that would have been inadequate to begin with.
+
At the age of two, Jean-Paul’s biological parents were killed in an automobile accident. Separated from his twin sister, he was adopted by the Martins, who were distantly related to his mother. However, they also met an untimely end when Jean-Paul was five years old. He was quickly placed in foster care, but due to the emotional trauma he’d suffered so early in life he was neither demonstrative nor overly affectionate toward his foster parents. In fact, he was quite prone to acting out, which made it nearly impossible to find him a permanent home. Jean-Paul was bounced from foster family to foster family, none of them equipped to deal with the trouble he inevitably caused.
 +
 
 +
His behavior only grew worse as Jean-Paul got older, progressing from a chilly disdain for those who had taken him in to outright disrespect and rebellion against his foster parents. At the age of thirteen, after a particularly violent confrontation with his current foster father, Jean-Paul ran away. He spent nearly three months subsisting on the streets of Montreal, seeking shelter where he could and doing everything possible to avoid being found and put back into the foster system. His days were spent picking pockets, scrounging through dumpsters for scraps of food, and stealing from open-air market vendors while he spent his nights sleeping in the doorways of shops, alleys, and abandoned buildings. Jean-Paul was always looking over his shoulder, desperately lonely and entirely unwilling to admit that.
 +
 
 +
To make matters worse, Jean-Paul’s mutation began to assert itself during this period of his life, making him somewhat quicker on his feet than most. That might have been seen as an advantage, especially where his pick-pocketing and theft were concerned, however the mutation brought with it an increased metabolism. This caused the boy to begin to slowly starve on a diet that wouldn’t have been adequate for a normal human his age.
  
−
This bleak lifestyle came to an end when Jean-Paul tried to steal from a book vendor patronized by Raymonde Belmonde, a local business owner. Raymonde  grabbed Jean-Paul's wrist to halt him, earning a punch in the jaw for his trouble, and was alarmed to find that the boy was little more than skin and bones in his grip. A promise of hot food and the bookseller's grudging promise not to involve police took a lot of the fight out of the half-starved youth and, over the course of the meal, Raymonde coaxed the boy's story out of him. Raymonde ultimately decided that the boy was not going back into the care of people that had failed him so utterly and managed to call in a significant favor from a local politician, who pulled the strings necessary to establish Raymonde as Jean-Paul's legal guardian. Monsieur Belmonde took on the task of civilizing the suspicious young urchin. Though Jean-Paul never took very well to formal schooling, once the boy's mind was stimulated, it turned out that Jean-Paul had a voracious curiosity that went to work on every book in Raymonde's possession. Raymonde also introduced Jean-Paul to the pastime that would quickly become the young man's greatest passion: skiing. By sixteen, Jean-Paul was a top contender in multiple events; by seventeen, he was a shoe-in for the upcoming winter games. Jean-Paul also received his high-school equivalency at seventeen, but put off college in favor of pursuing athletics; it wasn't until years later, when being outed as a mutant forced him to step away from professional competition, that he chose to pursue higher education.
+
This all came to an end, though, when Jean-Paul attempted to steal from a book vendor patronized by Raymonde Belmonde, a local business owner whose work wasn’t necessarily all on the up and up. Belmonde grabbed Jean-Paul’s wrist to halt him, causing the boy to punch him. However Belmonde was more alarmed by the horrible condition the boy was in than by the violence he’d demonstrated. Warily, Jean-Paul accepted the invitation Belmonde extended to him for a hot meal. He was surprised, though, when Belmonde also managed to extract a promise from the bookseller to not involve the police – that act took most of the fight out of Jean-Paul, which made getting him to speak of his history a bit easier than it would have been otherwise. Over the course of the promised meal, Belmonde did just that – and wound up deciding that it would be for the best if the boy didn’t return to the streets and or his former life in the foster care system.
  
−
Jean-Paul sought and gained his emancipation from the foster system at age sixteen. Though he had grown to trust Raymonde deeply, Jean-Paul's guardian was not a young man and the boy was not willing to chance that he would be at the mercy of others again if anything should happen to Raymonde.
+
Belmonde managed to call in a significant favour from a local politician, who pulled the necessary strings to establish Belmonde himself as Jean-Paul’s legal guardian. He took on the task of civilising the suspicious young man with gusto, introducing Jean-Paul to literature and art. While Jean-Paul never took very well to formal schooling, he read every book in Belmonde’s possession, awakening a love of reading that has continued to this day. This curiosity extended into other things, leading him to enjoy simple puzzles as well as more complex games like Rubic’s Cubes.
  
−
Jean-Paul competed in the Winter Olympics when he was eighteen and once held four Olympic gold medals, all of which he turned over after publicly acknowledging his status as a mutant in 1990. Jean-Paul has been out of the closet as a gay man to the public and media since 1994 as well, that announcement prompting his first sabbatical from [[Department H]]. Seeking a respite from the scandal at home, Jean-Paul time spent backpacking through the French countryside. On a whim, he applied to the D'Arbanville Circus in France and took a spot among their acrobats using the alias "Paul Martin". He developed a close relationship with the circus owner's hoyden daughter, Clementine D'Arbanville, to whom he confided his identity. He remains in sporadic contact with her.
+
It was during this time that Belmonde also introduced Jean-Paul to the pastime that would quickly become the young man’s greatest passion – skiing. By fifteen, Jean-Paul was a top contender in multiple events. By sixteen he was a shoe-in for the upcoming winter games. Jean-Paul received his high school equivalency at seventeen, but put off attending university in favour of pursuing athletics. It wasn’t until years later that he chose to pursue higher education.
 +
 
 +
At sixteen, Jean-Paul sought and gained his emancipation from the foster care system. Though he had grown to trust Belmonde, Jean-Paul recognised that his guardian was not a young man and, therefore, was not willing to take the chance of being at anyone else’s mercy should something unfortunate and unforeseen happen to the older man.
 +
 
 +
While competing in the 1988 Olympics, Jean-Paul won four gold medals and made more of a name for himself in the sports world than he had before.
  
 
==='''Alpha Flight'''===
 
==='''Alpha Flight'''===
  
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Jean-Paul was contacted by Department H after their background check of Jeanne-Marie turned up the fact that she was the twin sister of the famous skiing champion. He was initially uninterested in their offer to join the Flight program and, when it was hinted that Department H was aware of his mutantcy, he was prepared to walk out of the interview. It was then that Jeanne-Marie made her presence known. Her existence and participation in the newly-formed Flight Program was intriguing to the point that Jean-Paul grudgingly agreed to at least give the program a shot.
+
Jean-Paul was contacted by James MacDonald Hudson of [[Department H]] after their background check of Jeanne-Marie turned up the fact that she was the twin sister of the famous skiing champion. He was initially uninterested in their offer to join the Flight Program. When the Department H representatives hinted that they knew of his mutation, Jean-Paul was prepared to walk out of the interview. However, that was when they introduced him to Jeanne-Marie. Her existence and participation in the newly-formed Flight Program was intriguing enough for Jean-Paul to grudgingly agree to give the Program a shot and he joined them as Northstar.
 +
 
 +
He and his sister were the youngest members of the training program at the time and Jean-Paul’s powers, as well as his desire to prove himself the best in these odd new circumstances despite his youth, quickly made it clear that he could be a great asset to the Flight Program. His arrogance, attitude, and complete impatience with the team dynamics, however, made it uncertain as to whether or not he would be. It was one of Jean-Paul’s new teammates, [[Alpha Flight| Walter Lankowski]], who seemed to have the most success befriending the young hotshot and bringing him around to the idea of working with the team for a more noble cause than his own glory. This friendship, however, was not destined to last to the end of training – Jean-Paul took Langkowski’s attentions as an indication of something more than simple overtures of friendship, while Langkowski’s interest in the speedster had been motivated by his romantic feelings toward Jeanne-Marie. Unsurprisingly, this revelation soured Jean-Paul’s friendship with Langkowski and was a source of constant strife between the twins. Jean-Paul was simultaneously jealous of his sister’s happiness and fearful that her new beau would mean she had no more use for the brother she hardly knew, anyway.
 +
 
 +
Thanks to the conflict with his sister, the disintegration of his one friendship within the team, and the knowledge that his mutation would become a matter of public record once his training was complete, Jean-Paul found the prospect of officially joining Alpha Flight less and less attractive. He decided to quit the program, only to have his plans disrupted when his sister’s dissociative identity disorder manifested during a life-fire training exercise, reducing her to her panicked Jeanne-Marie persona and nearly causing disaster.
 +
 
 +
Despite what Jean-Paul considered an unacceptable risk to his sister’s well-being, [[Department H]] insisted that her condition was manageable and indicated that, should she wish it, she would be allowed to remain with the program. Trying to talk his sister into leaving with him proved fruitless and, as he still did not trust the team or Department H to have his sister’s best interests at heart, Jean-Paul opted to stay with Alpha Flight in the hopes that he could eventually convince Jeanne-Marie to leave. With his course now set, Jean-Paul took the initiative to out himself as a mutant in 1990, citing his own reasons for doing so and leaving the team, along with Department H, out of the initial publicity. This meant that he had to return the gold medals he’d won in the 1988 Olympics, but once Jean-Paul fully understood what he was, he came to the conclusion that there was no way he could know whether or not he’d unconsciously used his powers to aide him during the competition.
 +
 
 +
Later that same year, Jean-Paul made another attempt to reconcile with Jeanne-Marie, offering to take her to Montreal for a weekend to see the neighbourhood where he’d grown up and to meet Belmonde, whom he viewed as the closest thing to a father-figure he’d ever had. The visit was going well, only to take a tragic turn when Jean-Paul took his sister on a tour of Belmonde’s bistro, including the upstairs apartment. When they returned to the front of the business, it was to find Belmonde being menaced by a local thug named Ernest St. Ives who had been hired as the muscle in a kidnapping and extortion scheme devised by Belmonde’s own daughter.
 +
 
 +
Unbeknownst to his employer, St. Ives possessed an uncontrolled death-touch. St. Ives tried to make sure he got away by threatening Belmonde, but the old man fought his grip. St. Ives tried to immobilise him with a hold on the back of his neck, but that first touch killed Belmonde. The shock of witnessing the murder caused Jeanne-Marie’s timid persona to emerge again, which distracted Jean-Paul just enough for St. Ives to recover faster than him. He dropped the body and took Jeanne-Marie as his new hostage, thus ensuring his escape.
  
−
Jean-Paul and Jeanne-Marie were the youngest members of the training program at the time, and Jean-Paul's powers and desire to prove himself the best in these odd new circumstances despite his youth made it clear in short order that he could be a great asset to the Flight Program. His superior attitude and complete impatience with team dynamics, however, made it uncertain whether or not he ''would'' be. It was one of Northstar's new teammates, [[Alpha Flight| Walter Langkowski]], who seemed to have the most success befriending and bringing the young hotshot around to the idea of working with the team for a more noble cause than his own glory. This friendship, however, was not destined to last to the end of training -- Jean-Paul took Langkowski's attentions as something more than just overtures of friendship, while Langkowski's interest in the speedster had mostly been with an eye toward getting into the good graces of Jeanne-Marie, the twin he felt an actual romantic interest toward. Unsurprisingly, This revelation soured Jean-Paul's relationship with Langkowski and was a source of constant strife between the twins, as Jean-Paul was simultaneously jealous of his sister's happiness and fearful that her new beau would mean that she had no more use for a brother she hardly knew anyway.
+
Once he’d gotten to one of his safehouses, St. Ives contacted his partner, Belmonde’s daughter, in a panic, demanding that she help him. However, she refused and hung up on him, having learned of her father’s death. Jean-Paul arrived shortly thereafter, having tracked Jeanne-Marie via their mental link. Only the combination of St. Ives’ healing factor and Jeanne-Marie’s more stable persona coming to the fore kept Jean-Paul from killing the man outright. She managed to talk him down, then contacted the authorities so that St. Ives could be taken into custody. St. Ives quickly gave up his partner, Belmonde’s daughter, leaving Jean-Paul furious, heartsick, and feeling very isolated.
  
−
With the new conflict with his sister, the disintegration of his one friendship on the team, and the knowledge that his mutancy would become a matter of public record once his training was complete, joining Alpha Flight became a steadily less-attractive proposition, and Jean-Paul decided to quit the program. His plans to leave were disrupted when his sister's dissociative identity disorder manifested during a live-fire training exercise, reducing her to her panicked Jeanne-Marie persona and nearly resulting in disaster. Despite what Jean-Paul considered an unacceptable risk to his sister's well-being, it was insisted that her condition was manageable and that Jeanne-Marie would be allowed to remain with the program if she so chose. Trying to talk his sister into leaving with him proved fruitless and, as he did not trust the team or Department H to have his sister's best interests at heart, Jean-Paul opted to stay with Alpha Flight in the hopes that he could eventually convince Aurora that leaving Alpha Flight would be for the best. His course being set, he took the initiative and outed himself as a mutant in 1990, citing his own reasons for doing so and leaving the team and Department H out of the initial publicity.
+
With nowhere else to channel his anger, he rounded on Jeanne-Marie, accusing her of whoring herself out to St. Ives to preserve her own life. She declared their affiliation dissolved, retreating to Department H and her relationship with Langkowski. Begging her lover to help her differentiate her powers from her brother’s, Jeanne-Marie managed to convince him that it was for the best. Langkowski devised an experimental procedure that ultimately put Aurora’s powers in a state of flux, severed her mental link with her brother, and caused the twins’ powers to neutralise each other upon physical contact.
  
−
Later that same year, Jean-Paul made a further attempt to reconcile with his sister by offering to take her to Montreal for a weekend to see the neighborhood where he grew up and meet the man who raised him. The visit took a tragic turn when Jean-Paul took his sister on a tour of Raymonde's bistro and the upstairs apartment, only to return to the front of the business to find Raymonde being menaced by a local thug by the name of  Ernst St. Ives, who had been hired as the muscle in a kidnapping and extortion scheme devised by Raymonde's own daughter. Unknown to his employer, St. Ives was also possessed an uncontrolled death-touch. St. Ives tried to make sure his get away by threatening his hostage, but the old man fought his grip. St. Ives tried to immobilize Raymonde with a hold on the back of the neck, but the first touch killed the old man. The shock of witnessing the murder caused Aurora to revert to her timid Jeanne-Marie persona. St. Ives recovered faster than either of the horrified twins, dropping the body and claiming Jeanne-Marie as his new hostage, which allowed him to escape.
+
For his part, Jean-Paul managed to hold himself together until after St. Ives’ trial and sentencing. He then fell into a self-destructive spiral of alcoholic binges and one-night stands in an effort to keep the emotions associated with Belmonde’s death and his estrangement from his sister at bay. It took an HIV scare to snap him out of it and, while he wasn’t sure what was worth living for, Jean-Paul was entirely certain of the fact that he didn’t want to die whilst wasting away in a hospital bed. He approached Jeanne-Marie once more in the hopes of salvaging their relationship and, to a limited extent, they managed to forgive one another. They remained infamous for fighting and reconciling throughout their time in Alpha Flight though.
  
−
Once hidden in one of his boltholes, Ernst contacted his partner in a panic, demanding that she aid him, but she refused and hung up on him. Jean-Paul arrived shortly thereafter, having tracked Jeanne-Marie via their mental link. The speedster was in a murderous rage, and only the combination of Ernst's healing factor and Aurora coming back to herself kept Jean-Paul from outright killing his target. She managed to talk her brother down and the authorities were contacted. Ernst was taken into custody where he quickly turned on his partner. Furious, heartsick, and with no other target left for him to lash out against, Jean-Paul rounded on his sister, accusing her of whoring herself to St. Ives to preserve her own neck. Stunned and hurt, Jeanne-Marie declared their affiliation dissolved and retreated back to Langkowski, whom she begged to help her differentiate her powers from her brother's so as to be unlike him as possible. Langkowski agreed, devising an experimental procedure that ultimately put Aurora's powers in a state of flux, severed her mental link with her brother, and caused the twins' powers to neutralize each other on contact.  
+
It was at this point in his life that he chose to pursue higher education, applying to and being accepted by the Université de Montréal. There he studied Literature and History, earning an undergraduate degree in English Studies and Comparative Literature before going on to receive his Masters in Comparative Literature.
  
−
For his part, Jean-Paul managed to hold himself together until after the trial and sentencing of St. Ives and his partner, then fell into a self-destructive spiral of drinking and one-night stands to keep the emotions associated with Raymonde's death and his estrangement from his sister at bay. It took an HIV scare from one of his former partners to snap it out of him; while he wasn't sure what he had worth living for, Jean-Paul was entirely certain that he didn't want to die wasting away in a hospital bed. He approached his sister once more in the hopes of salvaging their relationship and, to an extent, they managed to forgive each other, though they remained infamous for fighting and reconciling throughout their time in Alpha Flight.
+
Jean-Paul spent some time backpacking through the French countryside after being outed as a gay man in 1994 and, on a whim, joined the D’Arbanville Circus there using the alias “Paul Martin.” He took a spot amongst their acrobats, where he quickly learned the ins and outs of being a trapeze artist. It was while he was with the Circus that Jean-Paul developed a close friendship with the owner’s daughter, Clementine D’Arbanville. He confided his true identity to her and they remain in somewhat sporadic contact.
  
−
What seemed to be the final blow to the twins' relationship came in December of 2003 after they made plans to spend Christmas together. To Jean-Paul's surprise, Aurora decided to bring along Langkowski, with whom she had been long involved in an on-again, off-again relationship, to participate in the festivities. Neither twin had the faintest idea that Langkowski would propose at dinner that first night. Jean-Paul suddenly found himself thirty-four, alone, still half in love and half despising of his sister's fiancee and with little of what he considered a future. Visibly shaken, he turned cold to his sister and her new fiance. Aurora, hurt that her brother, the man she loved most in her life, could not be happy for her on such a joyous occasion, confronted Jean-Paul angrily about his behavior, sparking a harsh argument that boiled over into recriminations and accusations and ended with both Beaubiers convinced this was the end of their partnership. Alone again at the low point of a depressingly familiar cycle, Jean-Paul came to the decision that he could not continue on as he had for so long and resigned from Alpha Flight in January 2004.
+
The final blow to the twins’ relationship came in December of 2003 after they made plans to spend Christmas together. Jeanne-Marie decided to bring Langkowski along, since their on-again, off-again relationship was on once more. Neither twin had the faintest idea that Langkowski would propose at dinner that first night. Jean-Paul suddenly found himself alone at age 34 without much of a future, still half in love with and half despising his sister’s new fiancé. Visibly shaken, he gave Jeanne-Marie and Langkowski the cold shoulder.
 +
 
 +
Hurt that her brother could not be happy for her on such a joyous occasion, Jean-Marie confronted Jean-Paul about his behaviour, sparking a harsh argument between them. The argument boiled over into recriminations and accusations, ending with both Beaubiers convinced this was the end of their partnership.
 +
 
 +
Alone again and at the low point of a depressingly familiar cycle, Jean-Paul came to the decision that he could no longer continue his work with Alpha Flight. He resigned from the program in January of 2004.
  
 
=== '''Living At The X-Mansion''' ===
 
=== '''Living At The X-Mansion''' ===
  
−
Not long after parting ways with Alpha Flight, Jean-Paul received a job offer from [[Charles Xavier]] to act as a teacher and counselor at his school. Though the offer was unexpected, Jean-Paul was intrigued by the opportunity and relocated to Westchester with his cat, Delphine. He soon developed a protective mentor relationship with [[Clarice Ferguson]], a shy young student. In addition to his teaching duties, Jean-Paul began to train with the X-Men, thinking that he could at least put his tactical training with Alpha Flight to further use. It turned out to be a wise choice -- only a month after his arrival, one of his students, [[Shiro Yoshida]], made a suicidal attempt to burn out his powers. Though Jean-Paul managed to keep the despairing boy from from plummeting to his death, he absorbed a lethal amount of radiation during the rescue. It was only due to an application of mystic healing by [[Amanda Sefton]] that Jean-Paul survived, and even so, he spent an utterly miserable span of time in the medlab recovering from the effects of radiation poisoning.
+
Not long after parting ways with Alpha Flight, Jean-Paul received a job offer from [[Charles Xavier]]. Though the opportunity was unexpected, Jean-Paul was intrigued and relocated to Westchester, NY with his cat, Delphine. He soon developed a protective mentorship with [[Clarice Ferguson]]. In addition to his teaching duties, Jean-Paul began to train with the X-Men, thinking he could at least put his tactical training with [[Alpha Flight]] to further use. It turned out to be a wise choice – only a month after his arrival, one of his students, [[Shiro Yoshida]], made a suicidal attempt to burn out his powers. Though Jean-Paul managed to keep him from plummeting to his death, he absorbed a lethal amount of radiation during the rescue. It was only due to an application of mystic healing by [[Amanda Sefton]] that Jean-Paul survived. Even so, he spent an utterly miserable span of time in the medlab recovering from the effects of radiation poisoning.
 +
 
 +
In [[September 2004| September of 2004]], Jean-Paul was once again reunited with his sister after she appeared on the school’s doorstep. Sam Guthrie found her and took the disoriented woman to the infirmary so she could be checked out. There, Jeanne-Marie proceeded to mistake [[Hank McCoy]] for Walter and attacked him, stopping her assault only when Jean-Paul came down to retrieve her. Despite the fact that Jeanne-Marie’s DID had left her more mentally unbalanced than ever, the twins once again reconciled and Aurora remained at the school.
 +
 
 +
Though he was relieved to see his sister again, Jean-Paul was dismayed by her precarious mental state, a condition apparently exacerbated by months of mistreatment at the hands of the doctors within the mental institution where she'd been committed by her former fiancé, Langkowski. Beyond sharing that bit of information with Jean-Paul, his sister would say nothing of what else had happened while they’d been separated and refused to talk about Langkowski.
  
−
In [[September 2004]], Jean-Paul was once again reunited with his sister after she appeared on the school's doorstep one morning. She was found by Sam Guthrie, who took the disoriented woman to be checked over in the infirmary after she passed out in his arms. There, Jeanne-Marie proceeded to mistake [[Hank McCoy]] for Walter, attacking him in the medlab until Jean-Paul came down to retrieve her. Despite the fact that Jeanne-Marie's DID had left her mental condition more unbalanced than ever, the twins reconciled and Aurora remained at the school, refusing to leave her brother's side. Though he was relieved to see his sister again, Jean-Paul was dismayed at her precarious mental state, the result of several months of maltreatment at the hands of doctors in the mental institution to which she had been committed. Only three months after he arrived, Jean-Paul departed the school for his sister's sake, feeling that it would be best to return with Jeanne-Marie to Canada, away from the relative chaos of the school.
+
Only three months after arriving at the school, Jean-Paul departed Xavier’s School for his sister’s sake, feeling it would be best for them to return to Canada so Jean-Marie could be away from the relative chaos of the school.
  
 
==='''After Xavier's'''===
 
==='''After Xavier's'''===
  
−
After leaving Xavier's, Jean-Paul retired with his sister to his home in Laval in the hopes that the quiet, semi-rural environment and the presence of someone she trusted would help quiet the turmoil in her mind. Jeanne-Marie, however, continued to slowly deteriorate, her mental state swinging from dangerously fractured to guilt-wracked lucidity. She would alternately curse and attack her brother in her worst hours, or plead for his forgiveness and beg him to not send her away, to not let others see her in her misery. Spurred equally by an arrogance that lead him to believe that he could cure his sister on his own and a deep concern for her mental state if she should perceive herself as abandoned again, Jean-Paul obeyed her wishes.
+
Upon leaving Xavier’s, Jean-Paul retired to his home in Laval with Jeanne-Marie, hoping the quiet, semi-rural environment, combined with the presence of someone she trusted, would help quiet the turmoil in her mind. Jean-Marie’s mental state continued to deteriorate, swinging from dangerously fractured to guilt-wracked lucidity. She alternately cursed or attacked Jean-Paul, then pled for his forgiveness or begged him not to send her away. Spurred on by equal parts arrogance and concern, Jean-Paul obeyed her wishes.
−
 
 
−
After an incident that lead to Jeanne-Marie literally killing his pet cat with kindness, Jean-Paul became reluctant to leave his sister alone for more than few minutes, fearful of what she would do to herself, all the while deepening their unhealthy codependency. Finally, her brother's smothering devotion caused Aurora to lash out in a full fury, leaving Jean-Paul unconscious, battered, and bleeding. In the aftermath of the attack, Jeanne-Marie came back to herself. Horrified by what she had done, she alerted James and Heather Hudson to her brother's injuries and fled. She left Jean-Paul only a brief note stating her intention to come to peace with herself on her own or die in the attempt.
 
  
−
Jean-Paul searched for his sister for over a year, but in vain. At last, he attempted to move forward with his life again, though there was a part of him that remained braced for his sister to swoop in out of the blue and once more scatter any peace he'd found to the four winds.
+
After an incident that led to Jeanne-Marie literally killing his cat with kindness, Jean-Paul became reluctant to leave his sister alone for more than a few minutes. This resulted in a deepening of their unhealthy codependence. Finally, Jean-Paul’s smothering devotion caused Jean-Marie to lash out, leaving him unconscious, battered, and bleeding. In the aftermath of the attack, Jeanne-Marie had a moment of lucidity during which she realised what she’d done. Horrified, she alerted James and Heather Hudson to her brother’s condition and fled. She left Jean-Paul a brief note, stating that she intended to come to peace with herself alone or die in the attempt.
  
 +
Jean-Paul searched for Jean-Marie for over a year, but his efforts were in vain. At last, he decided to move forward with his life, though there was a part of him that remained braced for his sister to return out of the blue once more and scatter whatever peace he’d manage to find.
  
 
==='''Return To The School'''===
 
==='''Return To The School'''===
  
−
Lacking any other direction in his life, Jean-Paul contacted Xavier about the possibility of resuming a teaching position. Despite the fact that the school had a much smaller student body than during Jean-Paul's previous tenure, the Professor seemed willing to have him back on staff. Jean-Paul returned to the school in [[November 2008| November of 2008]], meaning to teach and still uncertain about whether or not he wished to rejoin the X-Men. He spent the remainder of the fall semester acting as an aide to other teachers and quickly renewed his old friendships with Scott, Shiro, and Nathan. He was, unfortunately, not able to reestablish his prior closeness with Clarice, who had grown into an impulsive young woman quite different from the shy girl he recalled.
+
Lacking any other direction in his life, Jean-Paul contacted Xavier about possibly returning to his teaching position at the school. Despite the fact that there were fewer students in attendance than during his previous tenure, Xavier seemed willing to have him back on the staff and Jean-Paul returned to the school in [[November 2008| November of 2008]]. He spent the remainder of the fall semester acting as an aide to other teachers, quickly renewing old friendships with Scott, Shiro, and Nathan whilst trying to decide whether or not he wanted to rejoin the X-Men. He was, unfortunately, unable to reestablish his former ties with [[Clarice Ferguson]].
  
−
It took some time to re-acclimate to life at the mansion after a span of near-hermitage, but Jean-Paul finally came to the decision to teach full-time instead of rejoining the X-Men in [[January 2009]], after participating in a mission in which [[Mechanisms of Revenge| several presumed-dead allies of the X-Men were revealed to be alive]]; at the end of the mission, he decided that he was out of practice with punching people in good cause and happy to remain so.
+
It took some time to acclimate to life at the mansion after years of near-hermitage, but in [[January 2009| January of 2009]], Jean-Paul finally decided to return to teaching full-time rather than rejoining the X-Men. He reached this conclusion after [[Mechanisms of Revenge| participating in a mission during which several allies of the X-Men who had been presumed dead were found alive]].
  
−
As his initial teaching stint at the school had lasted less than three months, Jean-Paul had more than a few doubts about how well he would take to a second attempt. To his surprise, he found himself enjoying both the literature classes he had been assigned as well as a certain amount of popularity among the student body (undoubtedly influenced by his habit of cooking for any student who turned up at his suite). Among his students, he struck up especially close bonds with [[Noriko Kikuchi]], whom he tutored in the finer points of living as a speedster, even a part-time one, [[Catseye]], and [[Johnny Gallo]], who more or less latched on to the older mutant as a surrogate father.
+
As his initial teaching stint at the school had lasted less than three months, Jean-Paul had more than a few doubts as to how well he’d take to this second attempt. However, to his surprise, he found himself enjoying both the literature classes he’d been assigned and his interaction with the students themselves. Among his students, he struck up especially close bonds with [[Noriko Kikuchi]], whom he tutored in the finer points of living as a speedster, [[Catseye]], and [[Johnny Gallo]].
  
−
In early [[April 2009| April]], the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%BBret%C3%A9_du_Qu%C3%A9bec Sûreté du Québec] contacted Jean-Paul at the school, informing him that Ernst St. Ives had escaped from prison and managed to take hostages. Attempts to negotiate with the man had failed; St. Ives would only speak to Jean-Paul and threatened to kill the hostages if his demands were not met. Despite the knowledge that this was almost certainly a trap, Jean-Paul responded to the call. Upon arrival, he found that St. Ives had taken an entire family hostage in their own basement. St. Ives released two members of the family upon Jean-Paul's arrival, but kept back the third, an old man, for the purpose of goading Jean-Paul and tormenting him with reminders of his past failures. In the end, St Ives moved to kill his hostage with his death touch and Jean-Paul was forced to kill St. Ives in order to stop him from carrying through. Jean-Paul was detained by the authorities for several days of questioning, but the homicide was ultimately deemed justifiable.  
+
In early [[April 2009| April]], the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%BBret%C3%A9_du_Qu%C3%A9bec Sûreté du Québec] contacted Jean-Paul, informing him that Ernest St. Ives had escaped from prison and managed to once again take hostages. Attempts to negotiate with the man had failed and St. Ives had made it clear that he would speak only with Jean-Paul, even going so far as to threaten to kill hostages if his demands were not met. Despite knowing that this was almost certainly a trap, Jean-Paul responded to the call. Upon his arrival, he found that St. Ives had taken an entire family hostage in their own basement. St. Ives released two members of the family, but kept back the third, an old man, for the purpose of goading Jean-Paul and tormenting him with reminders of his failure to prevent Belmonde’s death. In the end, St. Ives moved to kill his hostage with his power, but Jean-Paul managed to kill him before he could. Jean-Paul was detained by the Canadian authorities for several days of questioning, but the homicide was ultimately deemed justifiable and he was released without being charged.
  
−
Deeply shaken by the experience, Jean-Paul opted to spend time on Muir with Nathan Dayspring and his family to recover, but his return to the school was not the quiet affair he might have wished. The [[Stepford Cuckoos]] skimmed information about Jean-Paul's absence from the mind of Johnny Gallo, who had inadvertently eavesdropped on a conversation between Scott Summers and Jean-Paul, and began spreading rumors through the school. In the end, Jean-Paul wound up making a public confession on the journal system to set the matter straight.
+
Deeply shaken by the experience, Jean-Paul opted to spend some time on Muir Island with [[Nathan Dayspring]] and his family. His return to the school wasn’t the quiet affair that he might have hoped for, since the [[Stepford Cuckoos]] had skimmed the information about Jean-Paul’s absence from Johnny Gallo’s mind after the boy inadvertently eavesdropped on a conversation between [[Scott Summers]] and Jean-Paul himself. They began spreading rumours through the school that led Jean-Paul to make a statement on the journal system so he could set the record straight.
  
−
Shortly after his return from Québec, Jean-Paul struck up a friendship with [[Jake Gavin]], which quickly transitioned to a physical relationship. Though the two shared an affinity for good books, good food, and mauling each other over the bedsheets, Jean-Paul hoped for a more committed relationship, while the very idea made Jake skittish.
+
Shortly after his return from Quebec, Jean-Paul struck up a friendship with [[Jake Gavin]]. That friendship quickly transitioned into a physical relationship. However, despite the fact that the two shared an affinity for good books, good food, and good sex, Jean-Paul hoped for something a little more committed and the thought of that sort of commitment made Jake skittish.
  
 
==='''Mnemovore'''===
 
==='''Mnemovore'''===
  
−
In [[June 2009]], Nathan and Jean-Paul were ambushed by Taygetos personnel as they returned from a trip to assist with an Elpis-involved athletics program in Moldova. The mission was headed by a telepath called [[Taygetos| Shrine]], whose intent was to capture Nathan. During the ambush, Nathan was inadvertently teleported away due to Shrine's indiscriminate mental attacks catching his own team's teleporter in their wake. Having lost their primary target, the Taygetos operatives took Jean-Paul instead, transporting him to one of their safehouses in a secluded area of Romania. There, he was telepathically interrogated and tortured by Shrine, with the aim of turning him into a weapon to be used when Nathan made his inevitable rescue attempt. However, there was an unforeseen disruption during the reprogramming process, and Shrine found his weapon turning against him. By the time the rescue team, headed by [[Jean Grey]] and a recovered Nathan, arrived, the Taygetos personnel were dead at Jean-Paul's hands. The speedster, who had been driven to a psychotic break by Shrine's mental violations, responded to the team's presence by trying to kill them as well. The X-Men subdued Jean-Paul, then stripped the safehouse of any useful information before Shiro razed it to the ground. The X-Men returned to the mansion, where Nathan, Jean, and Charles Xavier begin the process of restoring Jean-Paul's mind; the bond of friendship between Nathan and Jean-Paul was critical to this process, as it was only the trust that the two shared that allowed Nathan to venture deep enough into the speedster's mind to locate and preserve the parts of Jean-Paul not despoiled in the reprogramming process.
+
In [[June 2009| June of 2009]], Nathan and Jean-Paul were ambushed by [[Taygetos]] personnel on their return from a trip to assist with an Elpis-involved athletics program in Moldova. The mission was headed by a telepath called Shrine who intended to capture Nathan. However, during the ambush Nathan was inadvertently teleported away when [[Taygetos| Shrine’s]] indiscriminate mental attacks caught his own team’s teleporter in their wake. Having lost their primary target, the Taygetos operatives took Jean-Paul instead, transporting him to one of their safehouses in a secluded part of Romania.
 +
 
 +
There, Jean-Paul was telepathically interrogated and tortured by Shrine in the hopes of turning him into a weapon that could be used when Nathan inevitably attempted to rescue his friend. However, due to an unforeseen disruption during the reprogramming process, Shrine found his weapon turning against him. By the time the rescue team arrived, headed by [[Jean Grey]] and a recovered Nathan, the Taygetos personnel were dead. The speedster, who had been driven to a psychotic break by Shrine’s mental violations, responded to the team’s presence by trying to kill them much the way he’d killed the Taygetos personnel.
 +
 
 +
The X-Men subdued Jean-Paul and stripped the safehouse of any useful information before Shiro razed it to the ground. They then returned to the mansion where Nathan, Jean, and Xavier began the difficult process of restoring Jean-Paul’s mind. The friendship between Nathan and Jean-Paul was critical to this process, as it was only the trust that Jean-Paul had in the other man that allowed Nathan to venture deep enough into the speedster’s mind to locate and preserve the parts of Jean-Paul not despoiled during the reprogramming process.
  
−
Even once Jean-Paul had recovered control over his own mind, the full weight of what he had done combined with lingering false images of atrocities which had been implanted in his mind in the course of breaking him down proved to be too much for him to cope with at once. Within a week of his return to consciousness, he broke off his relationship with Jake and attempted to commit suicide. In the wake of this, Xavier felt it best to install partial memory blocks of the event, allowing Jean-Paul to deal with the aftermath of the event at a rate that his still-healing mind could bear.  
+
Once Jean-Paul regained control of his own mind, the full weight of what he had done to the Taygetos personnel, combined with the lingering images of atrocities that Shrine had implanted in his mind, proved to be too much for him to cope with all at once. Within a week of his return to consciousness, he broke off his tenuous relationship with Jake and attempted to commit suicide. Xavier rightly felt it best to install partial memory blocks in Jean-Paul’s mind so that he could deal with the aftermath of the event at a rate that his still-healing mind could bear.
  
−
The one silver lining to Jean-Paul's kidnapping was that his trauma at the hands of the Taygetos personnel forced open the long-dormant link with his sister, Jeanne-Marie. Alerted her to her twin's distress, she was spurred to track down her brother and the two estranged siblings were again reunited. Jean-Paul and his sister continued to reside at the school, with him carrying on with with his teaching duties and undergoing continuing therapy to help him recover from the events in Romania.
+
Jean-Paul’s traumatic experiences at the hands of Shrine and the Taygetos personnel forced open the long-dormant mental bond with his sister, Jeanne-Marie. Feeling her twin’s distress, she managed to track him down and the estranged siblings were, once again, reunited. Jean-Paul and his sister resided at the school, each trying to acclimate to life there while he attempted to come to terms with what had transpired in Romania and resumed his teaching duties.
 +
 
 +
They soon discovered that, due to some as yet unknown factor, most likely to do with Jean-Paul’s torture and the subsequent repairs to his mind, the twins’ powers ceased negating each other. When they touched skin to skin, they could once again create a pure, white light – a part of their combined powers which had been lost after Jeanne-Marie asked Langkowski to alter her powers in 2004.
  
 
==='''Muir Island'''===
 
==='''Muir Island'''===
  
−
Following Shiro's own psychotic break [[Atomic Angel| in Japan]] and Jean-Paul's part in rescuing him from himself, Charles suggested that it would be a good idea for both Jean-Paul and Shiro if Jean-Paul accompanied his young friend to [[Muir Island]] for more intensive therapy. Jeanne-Marie went too, in order for the twins to work with [[Moira MacTaggart]] on their new/old powers development - the light strobe when they touched skin which had been part of their original powers, but which had been lost due to [[Alpha Flight| Langkowski's]] experiments at Aurora's behest. The three relocated in [[September 2009]], bidding temporary farewell to the school and their friends there.
+
After Shiro’s psychotic break [[Atomic Angel| in Japan]] and Jean-Paul’s participation in his rescue, Xavier suggested that it would be wise for them both to travel to [[Muir Island]] for more intensive therapy. Jeanne-Marie accompanied them so that the twins could work with [[Moira MacTaggart]] to better understand their powers. The three relocated in [[September 2009| September of 2009]], bidding temporary farewell to the school and their friends there.
 +
 
 +
As part of his therapy, Jean-Paul agreed to begin systematically working through the events that led up to his kidnapping and torture. An unforeseen consequence of this therapy wound up being that some of the blocks Xavier put in place in his mind loosened, shifted, and settled somewhere else in his mind. About a month into their stay on Muir this caused him to lose the ability to create the light that he and Jeanne-Marie had just recently begun to explore with Dr. MacTaggart’s help.  It was a loss which upset Jean-Paul intensely. He also began having nightmares about his torture, something which kept him from sleeping well.
 +
 
 +
It was during another therapy session while attempting to regain the ability to create light with Jeanne-Marie that a series of implanted memories surfaced and triggered a visceral reaction from Jean-Paul. That reaction took the form of a full-body concussive blast. The unfocused energy didn’t harm anyone, but it severely unnerved Jean-Paul and he called an immediate halt to all the therapy he’d been taking part in, effectively cutting himself off from Jeanne-Marie. Unable to cope with the distance he’d put between himself and his sister, Jean-Paul decided to leave Muir Island.
 +
 
 +
In short, he fled.
 +
 
 +
==='''Leaving Muir Island'''===
 +
 
 +
After flying across the Atlantic, a feat which left him exhausted and in dire need of rest, Jean-Paul collapsed in a motel in Virginia before picking up where he’d left off somewhere in his late twenties.  He began yet another downward spiral of self-destruction. He drank to dull the memories he didn’t want to have, fucked to make himself forget that he was alone, and avoided people he used to know. Ashamed and wanting nothing more than to return to the way things once were before he was tortured and lost himself, Jean-Paul found himself moving from one city to another.
 +
 
 +
Whilst in Boston, MA in December of 2009 Jean-Paul met a man named Stewart Bernard with whom he began a brief round of fucking. Brief because the morning after Bernard tried to rob Jean-Paul, manually restraining him and implying that he would rape him before leaving. The restraint, more than the implied physical violation, triggered another concussive blast that sent Bernard staggering backward. Once again unnerved – and now frightened of the fact that he had no control over this power and no way to understand it by himself, Jean-Paul made the grudging decision to seek help from Xavier.
 +
 
 +
Reluctant to expose himself as being vulnerable, though, Jean-Paul kept his enquiries quiet and waited to hear from Xavier as to whether or not he would once again be welcome at the mansion. One thing he specifically requested when contacting the older mutant was that he not be put on teaching duty, as he felt his powers were now too unpredictable to let him safely instruct students in any field. Mostly, though, he’s just not sure what might trigger another blast and would like to keep possible injuries to a minimum.
  
 
== '''Physical Characteristics''' ==
 
== '''Physical Characteristics''' ==
−
 
  
 
'''Height''': 5' 11"
 
'''Height''': 5' 11"
  
−
'''Weight''': 150 lbs
+
'''Weight''': 180 lbs
  
−
'''Eyes''': Arctic blue
+
'''Eyes''': Blue
  
−
'''Hair''': Glossy black
+
'''Hair''': Black
  
−
'''Other Features''': Jean-Paul has subtly pointed ears. He has quite a few scars, several of which he acquired during his stewardship of his sister: a short, jagged one over which obliterated a Gemini tattoo over his heart, and two razor-thin white lines, one across the right side of his throat, the other low on his stomach. There is a tattoo on his left bicep, the kanji for 'hashiru no sensei'.
+
'''Other Features''': Jean-Paul has subtly pointed ears. He has quite a few scars, several of which he acquired during his stewardship of his sister: a short, jagged one which nearly obliterated the Gemini tattoo over his heart and two razor-thin white lines – one across the right side of his throat, the other low on his stomach. There was a tattoo on his left bicep, the kanji for 'hashiru no sensei', but Jean-Paul has recently had it covered by a partial sleeve, the [http://lh6.ggpht.com/_Ge_bRZfmEUA/SuVSC3Qd96I/AAAAAAAAKWQ/nkmg3O7ghUY/s512/Major16.jpg| Tower tarot card, as drawn by Louis Royo].
  
 
== '''Powers''' ==
 
== '''Powers''' ==
  
−
Northstar's mutant powers first began manifesting in his early teens, but it was not until he was nearly seventeen that the full extent of his superspeed and the accompanying flight kicked in.  
+
Jean-Paul is a flight-capable speedster. It is a power which manifested in his mid-teens. However, it wasn’t until he was nearly nineteen that the full extent of his superspeed and the accompanying flight kicked in. He is exceptionally agile, able to reach incredible speeds on land (500 MPH, which he can maintain for approximately four hours before needing to rest) and in the air (roughly Mach 2, which he can maintain for around two hours before needing to rest), however pushing these limits puts a great strain on his system. Ignoring the limits of his abilities will result in Jean-Paul arriving at his destination sweat-lathered, body starving for oxygen, heart rate through the roof, and all his reserves drained. In the event that such a journey was necessary he would need to rest and recuperate for a day or so, usually whilst sleeping, to fully recover. It takes longer for him to recover from excessive exertion now than it did when he was twenty-two.
 +
 
 +
His mutation increases his metabolism, causing it to work faster than the human norm. This condition is exacerbated by his athletic activities. Jean-Paul, therefore, burns through a great deal of fuel very quickly and has to keep a close eye on what he eats to ensure he’s getting both enough calories and the proper nutrition. A side-effect of his rapid metabolism is that Jean-Paul has a minor healing factor and recovers from injuries significantly faster than a normal human. An example of this would be that, if he broke his arm, it would take around two weeks for him to have full functionality of the limb, as opposed to the typical four weeks or more for a non-mutant.
 +
 
 +
Jean-Paul’s mutation also provides him with something akin to overall durability whilst traveling at high speeds, allowing him to withstand the ravages of wind, friction, and air turbulence. Though this aspect of his mutation provides him with a certain amount of protection from damage caused by high-velocity collisions (he won’t break his own neck if he runs into a wall at full tilt), Jean-Paul can knock himself out if he slams into objects at high speeds. This increased durability also gives him a certain amount of protection from blunt-force trauma when he’s moving at superhuman speeds. However knives, claws, and bladed weapons can easily slice through his defences.
  
−
Northstar is a flight-capable speedster, exceptionally agile and able to reach incredible speeds on land and in the air. The overall durability of Northstar's body increases at high speeds, allowing him to withstand the ravages of wind, friction, and air turbulence. Though this aspect of his mutation provides him with a certain amount of protection from damage caused by high-velocity collisions (ie: he won't break his own neck if he runs into a wall at full tilt), Northstar can knock himself out if he slams into objects at high speeds. This increased durability also gives him a certain amount of protection from blunt-force trauma when he's moving at superhuman speeds, but knives, claws, and bladed weapons slice through his defenses easily. Northstar possesses the same vulnerabilities to the elements and injury as most humans, save for a resistance to extremes of cold. He is as susceptible as any normal human to mental attacks. His speed is not just flight, it applies to all his motion, and he is able to deliver jackhammer-speed blows and simply avoid or outmaneuver his opponents.  
+
His power has no bearing on his strength when he’s not moving at superspeeds.  He is, in fact, only as strong as a normal human man of his height and build, though he’s at peak physical condition for a man his age. That said, his powers increase the speed of all of Jean-Paul’s movements, which means he’s not only capable of flight, but can also move individual parts of his body at great speed independently of one another, which means he’s capable of delivering jackhammer-speed blows to opponents. This also allows him to avoid or outmaneuver most opponents.
  
−
Northstar's mutation increases his metabolism to something faster than the human norm, a condition exacerbated by his athletic activities. As a result, Northstar's body tends to burn through its fuel quickly; he needs to keep careful track of what he eats to be certain that he's getting both enough calories to function and proper nutrition. As a side-effect of his rapid metabolism, Northstar also has a minor healing factor and recovers from injuries significantly faster than a baseline human. For example, where it would normally take a month or more for a broken arm to heal, Northstar might have full use of the limb after two weeks.
+
He possesses the same vulnerability to the elements and injury as most humans, save a resistance to extremes of cold. This resistance comes from the kinetic energy he uses to propel himself, the molecular friction within Jean-Paul’s body, which causes him to run a bit warmer than most people. He is, however, just as vulnerable to mental attacks as any normal human.
  
−
Northstar is able to hit a top speed air speed of Mach 2 and is able to maintain that for up to two hours, and a top land speed of 500 MPH for roughly twice that long. Pushing these limits is a terrible strain on Northstar's system; he'll end the journey sweat-lathered with his body starving for oxygen, heartrate through the roof, reserves drained, and needing to pass out for a day to recharge. It also takes longer to fully recover from such punishing exhertions at forty than it did at twenty-one.
+
Due to [[Alpha Flight| Langkowski's]] experiment, from 1990 - 2009 contact with his twin sister, Jeanne-Marie, would nullify Jean-Paul's powers; this could last for up to a full day, but typically wore off after an hour or so. In [[August 2009| August of 2009]], following the renewal of their mental link, Northstar and Aurora's powers appeared to have begun functioning as they had originally, with physical contact between the twins resulting in an intense flare of white light. However, time at Muir Island has demonstrated that the flare of light between them is unstable, even when they are touching, and Jean-Paul left the island before more than cursory research into the problem could be done.
  
−
Due to Langkowski's experiment, from 1990 - 2009 contact with his twin sister, Jeanne-Marie, would nullify Northstar's powers; this could last for up to a full day, but typically wore off after an hour or so. In [[August 2009]], following the renewal of their mental link, Northstar and Aurora's powers began to function as they had originally, with physical contact between the twins resulting in an intense flare of white light.  
+
Jean-Paul can send out concussive blasts from his body, but this is a new development that he doesn’t understand and which he can’t, at the moment, consciously trigger. The only times he’s managed it have been when he felt threatened and as though he’d been backed into a corner – on Muir Island and then in a seedy motel in Boston, MA. Meaning, ultimately, that his concussive blasts are purely defensive and that he cannot control them.  
  
 
Due to his focus on physical fitness, Northstar's endurance and strength are at peak human levels for his size and build.
 
Due to his focus on physical fitness, Northstar's endurance and strength are at peak human levels for his size and build.
Line 193: Line 237:
 
== Meta ==
 
== Meta ==
  
−
'''Player''':  
+
'''Player''': [[Cai]]
  
−
'''E-mail''':  
+
'''E-mail''': [[IMAGE:Cai.jpg|160px]]
  
−
'''AIM''':  
+
'''AIM''': writteninsable
  
−
'''Player Icon Base''':  [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0553648/ Olivier Martinez]
+
'''Player Icon Base''':  [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1334869/ Logan Marshall-Green]
  
 
'''Meta Trivia'''
 
'''Meta Trivia'''
Line 207: Line 251:
 
[http://x-quebecois.livejournal.com/profile x_quebecois] was created by the mods to avoid the loss of any more Northstar journals.
 
[http://x-quebecois.livejournal.com/profile x_quebecois] was created by the mods to avoid the loss of any more Northstar journals.
  
 +
Picked up by [[Cai]] in [[January 2010]].
  
 
[[Category: Characters]]
 
[[Category: Characters]]

Revision as of 14:33, 19 January 2010

PHASE 1
Jean-Paul Beaubier
File:Northstar.png
Portrayed by Logan Marshall-Green
Codename: Northstar
Affiliations: none
Birthdate: May 26, 1970
Journal: x_quebecois
Player: Cai


Jean-Paul Beaubier has been a full-time teacher at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters and a member of Alpha Flight and the X-Men. He is currently at Muir Island Research Facility, undergoing treatment for psychic torture and working with his sister on relearning their powers.



Details

Character Journal: x_quebecois

Real Name: Jean-Paul Étienne Beaubier

Codename: Northstar

Aliases: Jean-Paul Martin

First Appearance: July 13, 2004

Date of Birth: May 26, 1970

Place of Birth: Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Citizenship: Canadian

Relatives: Jean-Baptiste Beaubier (father, deceased), Melisande Beaubier (mother, deceased), Louis Martin (adopted father, deceased), Jolie Martin (adopted mother, deceased), Raymonde Belmonde (father-figure/mentor, deceased), Jeanne-Marie Beaubier (twin sister)

Education: Undergraduate degree of English Studies and Comparative Literature from Université de Montréal and a Masters degree in Comparative Literature from the same. He also has a minor in History, specifically French Canadian, that he received credit for whilst earning his undergraduate degree.

Relationship Status: Single

Occupation: None currently. Formerly a professor at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.

Team Affiliation: Former member of Alpha Flight, former member of the X-Men.

Biography

Childhood

At the age of two, Jean-Paul’s biological parents were killed in an automobile accident. Separated from his twin sister, he was adopted by the Martins, who were distantly related to his mother. However, they also met an untimely end when Jean-Paul was five years old. He was quickly placed in foster care, but due to the emotional trauma he’d suffered so early in life he was neither demonstrative nor overly affectionate toward his foster parents. In fact, he was quite prone to acting out, which made it nearly impossible to find him a permanent home. Jean-Paul was bounced from foster family to foster family, none of them equipped to deal with the trouble he inevitably caused.

His behavior only grew worse as Jean-Paul got older, progressing from a chilly disdain for those who had taken him in to outright disrespect and rebellion against his foster parents. At the age of thirteen, after a particularly violent confrontation with his current foster father, Jean-Paul ran away. He spent nearly three months subsisting on the streets of Montreal, seeking shelter where he could and doing everything possible to avoid being found and put back into the foster system. His days were spent picking pockets, scrounging through dumpsters for scraps of food, and stealing from open-air market vendors while he spent his nights sleeping in the doorways of shops, alleys, and abandoned buildings. Jean-Paul was always looking over his shoulder, desperately lonely and entirely unwilling to admit that.

To make matters worse, Jean-Paul’s mutation began to assert itself during this period of his life, making him somewhat quicker on his feet than most. That might have been seen as an advantage, especially where his pick-pocketing and theft were concerned, however the mutation brought with it an increased metabolism. This caused the boy to begin to slowly starve on a diet that wouldn’t have been adequate for a normal human his age.

This all came to an end, though, when Jean-Paul attempted to steal from a book vendor patronized by Raymonde Belmonde, a local business owner whose work wasn’t necessarily all on the up and up. Belmonde grabbed Jean-Paul’s wrist to halt him, causing the boy to punch him. However Belmonde was more alarmed by the horrible condition the boy was in than by the violence he’d demonstrated. Warily, Jean-Paul accepted the invitation Belmonde extended to him for a hot meal. He was surprised, though, when Belmonde also managed to extract a promise from the bookseller to not involve the police – that act took most of the fight out of Jean-Paul, which made getting him to speak of his history a bit easier than it would have been otherwise. Over the course of the promised meal, Belmonde did just that – and wound up deciding that it would be for the best if the boy didn’t return to the streets and or his former life in the foster care system.

Belmonde managed to call in a significant favour from a local politician, who pulled the necessary strings to establish Belmonde himself as Jean-Paul’s legal guardian. He took on the task of civilising the suspicious young man with gusto, introducing Jean-Paul to literature and art. While Jean-Paul never took very well to formal schooling, he read every book in Belmonde’s possession, awakening a love of reading that has continued to this day. This curiosity extended into other things, leading him to enjoy simple puzzles as well as more complex games like Rubic’s Cubes.

It was during this time that Belmonde also introduced Jean-Paul to the pastime that would quickly become the young man’s greatest passion – skiing. By fifteen, Jean-Paul was a top contender in multiple events. By sixteen he was a shoe-in for the upcoming winter games. Jean-Paul received his high school equivalency at seventeen, but put off attending university in favour of pursuing athletics. It wasn’t until years later that he chose to pursue higher education.

At sixteen, Jean-Paul sought and gained his emancipation from the foster care system. Though he had grown to trust Belmonde, Jean-Paul recognised that his guardian was not a young man and, therefore, was not willing to take the chance of being at anyone else’s mercy should something unfortunate and unforeseen happen to the older man.

While competing in the 1988 Olympics, Jean-Paul won four gold medals and made more of a name for himself in the sports world than he had before.

Alpha Flight

Jean-Paul was contacted by James MacDonald Hudson of Department H after their background check of Jeanne-Marie turned up the fact that she was the twin sister of the famous skiing champion. He was initially uninterested in their offer to join the Flight Program. When the Department H representatives hinted that they knew of his mutation, Jean-Paul was prepared to walk out of the interview. However, that was when they introduced him to Jeanne-Marie. Her existence and participation in the newly-formed Flight Program was intriguing enough for Jean-Paul to grudgingly agree to give the Program a shot and he joined them as Northstar.

He and his sister were the youngest members of the training program at the time and Jean-Paul’s powers, as well as his desire to prove himself the best in these odd new circumstances despite his youth, quickly made it clear that he could be a great asset to the Flight Program. His arrogance, attitude, and complete impatience with the team dynamics, however, made it uncertain as to whether or not he would be. It was one of Jean-Paul’s new teammates, Walter Lankowski, who seemed to have the most success befriending the young hotshot and bringing him around to the idea of working with the team for a more noble cause than his own glory. This friendship, however, was not destined to last to the end of training – Jean-Paul took Langkowski’s attentions as an indication of something more than simple overtures of friendship, while Langkowski’s interest in the speedster had been motivated by his romantic feelings toward Jeanne-Marie. Unsurprisingly, this revelation soured Jean-Paul’s friendship with Langkowski and was a source of constant strife between the twins. Jean-Paul was simultaneously jealous of his sister’s happiness and fearful that her new beau would mean she had no more use for the brother she hardly knew, anyway.

Thanks to the conflict with his sister, the disintegration of his one friendship within the team, and the knowledge that his mutation would become a matter of public record once his training was complete, Jean-Paul found the prospect of officially joining Alpha Flight less and less attractive. He decided to quit the program, only to have his plans disrupted when his sister’s dissociative identity disorder manifested during a life-fire training exercise, reducing her to her panicked Jeanne-Marie persona and nearly causing disaster.

Despite what Jean-Paul considered an unacceptable risk to his sister’s well-being, Department H insisted that her condition was manageable and indicated that, should she wish it, she would be allowed to remain with the program. Trying to talk his sister into leaving with him proved fruitless and, as he still did not trust the team or Department H to have his sister’s best interests at heart, Jean-Paul opted to stay with Alpha Flight in the hopes that he could eventually convince Jeanne-Marie to leave. With his course now set, Jean-Paul took the initiative to out himself as a mutant in 1990, citing his own reasons for doing so and leaving the team, along with Department H, out of the initial publicity. This meant that he had to return the gold medals he’d won in the 1988 Olympics, but once Jean-Paul fully understood what he was, he came to the conclusion that there was no way he could know whether or not he’d unconsciously used his powers to aide him during the competition.

Later that same year, Jean-Paul made another attempt to reconcile with Jeanne-Marie, offering to take her to Montreal for a weekend to see the neighbourhood where he’d grown up and to meet Belmonde, whom he viewed as the closest thing to a father-figure he’d ever had. The visit was going well, only to take a tragic turn when Jean-Paul took his sister on a tour of Belmonde’s bistro, including the upstairs apartment. When they returned to the front of the business, it was to find Belmonde being menaced by a local thug named Ernest St. Ives who had been hired as the muscle in a kidnapping and extortion scheme devised by Belmonde’s own daughter.

Unbeknownst to his employer, St. Ives possessed an uncontrolled death-touch. St. Ives tried to make sure he got away by threatening Belmonde, but the old man fought his grip. St. Ives tried to immobilise him with a hold on the back of his neck, but that first touch killed Belmonde. The shock of witnessing the murder caused Jeanne-Marie’s timid persona to emerge again, which distracted Jean-Paul just enough for St. Ives to recover faster than him. He dropped the body and took Jeanne-Marie as his new hostage, thus ensuring his escape.

Once he’d gotten to one of his safehouses, St. Ives contacted his partner, Belmonde’s daughter, in a panic, demanding that she help him. However, she refused and hung up on him, having learned of her father’s death. Jean-Paul arrived shortly thereafter, having tracked Jeanne-Marie via their mental link. Only the combination of St. Ives’ healing factor and Jeanne-Marie’s more stable persona coming to the fore kept Jean-Paul from killing the man outright. She managed to talk him down, then contacted the authorities so that St. Ives could be taken into custody. St. Ives quickly gave up his partner, Belmonde’s daughter, leaving Jean-Paul furious, heartsick, and feeling very isolated.

With nowhere else to channel his anger, he rounded on Jeanne-Marie, accusing her of whoring herself out to St. Ives to preserve her own life. She declared their affiliation dissolved, retreating to Department H and her relationship with Langkowski. Begging her lover to help her differentiate her powers from her brother’s, Jeanne-Marie managed to convince him that it was for the best. Langkowski devised an experimental procedure that ultimately put Aurora’s powers in a state of flux, severed her mental link with her brother, and caused the twins’ powers to neutralise each other upon physical contact.

For his part, Jean-Paul managed to hold himself together until after St. Ives’ trial and sentencing. He then fell into a self-destructive spiral of alcoholic binges and one-night stands in an effort to keep the emotions associated with Belmonde’s death and his estrangement from his sister at bay. It took an HIV scare to snap him out of it and, while he wasn’t sure what was worth living for, Jean-Paul was entirely certain of the fact that he didn’t want to die whilst wasting away in a hospital bed. He approached Jeanne-Marie once more in the hopes of salvaging their relationship and, to a limited extent, they managed to forgive one another. They remained infamous for fighting and reconciling throughout their time in Alpha Flight though.

It was at this point in his life that he chose to pursue higher education, applying to and being accepted by the Université de Montréal. There he studied Literature and History, earning an undergraduate degree in English Studies and Comparative Literature before going on to receive his Masters in Comparative Literature.

Jean-Paul spent some time backpacking through the French countryside after being outed as a gay man in 1994 and, on a whim, joined the D’Arbanville Circus there using the alias “Paul Martin.” He took a spot amongst their acrobats, where he quickly learned the ins and outs of being a trapeze artist. It was while he was with the Circus that Jean-Paul developed a close friendship with the owner’s daughter, Clementine D’Arbanville. He confided his true identity to her and they remain in somewhat sporadic contact.

The final blow to the twins’ relationship came in December of 2003 after they made plans to spend Christmas together. Jeanne-Marie decided to bring Langkowski along, since their on-again, off-again relationship was on once more. Neither twin had the faintest idea that Langkowski would propose at dinner that first night. Jean-Paul suddenly found himself alone at age 34 without much of a future, still half in love with and half despising his sister’s new fiancé. Visibly shaken, he gave Jeanne-Marie and Langkowski the cold shoulder.

Hurt that her brother could not be happy for her on such a joyous occasion, Jean-Marie confronted Jean-Paul about his behaviour, sparking a harsh argument between them. The argument boiled over into recriminations and accusations, ending with both Beaubiers convinced this was the end of their partnership.

Alone again and at the low point of a depressingly familiar cycle, Jean-Paul came to the decision that he could no longer continue his work with Alpha Flight. He resigned from the program in January of 2004.

Living At The X-Mansion

Not long after parting ways with Alpha Flight, Jean-Paul received a job offer from Charles Xavier. Though the opportunity was unexpected, Jean-Paul was intrigued and relocated to Westchester, NY with his cat, Delphine. He soon developed a protective mentorship with Clarice Ferguson. In addition to his teaching duties, Jean-Paul began to train with the X-Men, thinking he could at least put his tactical training with Alpha Flight to further use. It turned out to be a wise choice – only a month after his arrival, one of his students, Shiro Yoshida, made a suicidal attempt to burn out his powers. Though Jean-Paul managed to keep him from plummeting to his death, he absorbed a lethal amount of radiation during the rescue. It was only due to an application of mystic healing by Amanda Sefton that Jean-Paul survived. Even so, he spent an utterly miserable span of time in the medlab recovering from the effects of radiation poisoning.

In September of 2004, Jean-Paul was once again reunited with his sister after she appeared on the school’s doorstep. Sam Guthrie found her and took the disoriented woman to the infirmary so she could be checked out. There, Jeanne-Marie proceeded to mistake Hank McCoy for Walter and attacked him, stopping her assault only when Jean-Paul came down to retrieve her. Despite the fact that Jeanne-Marie’s DID had left her more mentally unbalanced than ever, the twins once again reconciled and Aurora remained at the school.

Though he was relieved to see his sister again, Jean-Paul was dismayed by her precarious mental state, a condition apparently exacerbated by months of mistreatment at the hands of the doctors within the mental institution where she'd been committed by her former fiancé, Langkowski. Beyond sharing that bit of information with Jean-Paul, his sister would say nothing of what else had happened while they’d been separated and refused to talk about Langkowski.

Only three months after arriving at the school, Jean-Paul departed Xavier’s School for his sister’s sake, feeling it would be best for them to return to Canada so Jean-Marie could be away from the relative chaos of the school.

After Xavier's

Upon leaving Xavier’s, Jean-Paul retired to his home in Laval with Jeanne-Marie, hoping the quiet, semi-rural environment, combined with the presence of someone she trusted, would help quiet the turmoil in her mind. Jean-Marie’s mental state continued to deteriorate, swinging from dangerously fractured to guilt-wracked lucidity. She alternately cursed or attacked Jean-Paul, then pled for his forgiveness or begged him not to send her away. Spurred on by equal parts arrogance and concern, Jean-Paul obeyed her wishes.

After an incident that led to Jeanne-Marie literally killing his cat with kindness, Jean-Paul became reluctant to leave his sister alone for more than a few minutes. This resulted in a deepening of their unhealthy codependence. Finally, Jean-Paul’s smothering devotion caused Jean-Marie to lash out, leaving him unconscious, battered, and bleeding. In the aftermath of the attack, Jeanne-Marie had a moment of lucidity during which she realised what she’d done. Horrified, she alerted James and Heather Hudson to her brother’s condition and fled. She left Jean-Paul a brief note, stating that she intended to come to peace with herself alone or die in the attempt.

Jean-Paul searched for Jean-Marie for over a year, but his efforts were in vain. At last, he decided to move forward with his life, though there was a part of him that remained braced for his sister to return out of the blue once more and scatter whatever peace he’d manage to find.

Return To The School

Lacking any other direction in his life, Jean-Paul contacted Xavier about possibly returning to his teaching position at the school. Despite the fact that there were fewer students in attendance than during his previous tenure, Xavier seemed willing to have him back on the staff and Jean-Paul returned to the school in November of 2008. He spent the remainder of the fall semester acting as an aide to other teachers, quickly renewing old friendships with Scott, Shiro, and Nathan whilst trying to decide whether or not he wanted to rejoin the X-Men. He was, unfortunately, unable to reestablish his former ties with Clarice Ferguson.

It took some time to acclimate to life at the mansion after years of near-hermitage, but in January of 2009, Jean-Paul finally decided to return to teaching full-time rather than rejoining the X-Men. He reached this conclusion after participating in a mission during which several allies of the X-Men who had been presumed dead were found alive.

As his initial teaching stint at the school had lasted less than three months, Jean-Paul had more than a few doubts as to how well he’d take to this second attempt. However, to his surprise, he found himself enjoying both the literature classes he’d been assigned and his interaction with the students themselves. Among his students, he struck up especially close bonds with Noriko Kikuchi, whom he tutored in the finer points of living as a speedster, Catseye, and Johnny Gallo.

In early April, the Sûreté du Québec contacted Jean-Paul, informing him that Ernest St. Ives had escaped from prison and managed to once again take hostages. Attempts to negotiate with the man had failed and St. Ives had made it clear that he would speak only with Jean-Paul, even going so far as to threaten to kill hostages if his demands were not met. Despite knowing that this was almost certainly a trap, Jean-Paul responded to the call. Upon his arrival, he found that St. Ives had taken an entire family hostage in their own basement. St. Ives released two members of the family, but kept back the third, an old man, for the purpose of goading Jean-Paul and tormenting him with reminders of his failure to prevent Belmonde’s death. In the end, St. Ives moved to kill his hostage with his power, but Jean-Paul managed to kill him before he could. Jean-Paul was detained by the Canadian authorities for several days of questioning, but the homicide was ultimately deemed justifiable and he was released without being charged.

Deeply shaken by the experience, Jean-Paul opted to spend some time on Muir Island with Nathan Dayspring and his family. His return to the school wasn’t the quiet affair that he might have hoped for, since the Stepford Cuckoos had skimmed the information about Jean-Paul’s absence from Johnny Gallo’s mind after the boy inadvertently eavesdropped on a conversation between Scott Summers and Jean-Paul himself. They began spreading rumours through the school that led Jean-Paul to make a statement on the journal system so he could set the record straight.

Shortly after his return from Quebec, Jean-Paul struck up a friendship with Jake Gavin. That friendship quickly transitioned into a physical relationship. However, despite the fact that the two shared an affinity for good books, good food, and good sex, Jean-Paul hoped for something a little more committed and the thought of that sort of commitment made Jake skittish.

Mnemovore

In June of 2009, Nathan and Jean-Paul were ambushed by Taygetos personnel on their return from a trip to assist with an Elpis-involved athletics program in Moldova. The mission was headed by a telepath called Shrine who intended to capture Nathan. However, during the ambush Nathan was inadvertently teleported away when Shrine’s indiscriminate mental attacks caught his own team’s teleporter in their wake. Having lost their primary target, the Taygetos operatives took Jean-Paul instead, transporting him to one of their safehouses in a secluded part of Romania.

There, Jean-Paul was telepathically interrogated and tortured by Shrine in the hopes of turning him into a weapon that could be used when Nathan inevitably attempted to rescue his friend. However, due to an unforeseen disruption during the reprogramming process, Shrine found his weapon turning against him. By the time the rescue team arrived, headed by Jean Grey and a recovered Nathan, the Taygetos personnel were dead. The speedster, who had been driven to a psychotic break by Shrine’s mental violations, responded to the team’s presence by trying to kill them much the way he’d killed the Taygetos personnel.

The X-Men subdued Jean-Paul and stripped the safehouse of any useful information before Shiro razed it to the ground. They then returned to the mansion where Nathan, Jean, and Xavier began the difficult process of restoring Jean-Paul’s mind. The friendship between Nathan and Jean-Paul was critical to this process, as it was only the trust that Jean-Paul had in the other man that allowed Nathan to venture deep enough into the speedster’s mind to locate and preserve the parts of Jean-Paul not despoiled during the reprogramming process.

Once Jean-Paul regained control of his own mind, the full weight of what he had done to the Taygetos personnel, combined with the lingering images of atrocities that Shrine had implanted in his mind, proved to be too much for him to cope with all at once. Within a week of his return to consciousness, he broke off his tenuous relationship with Jake and attempted to commit suicide. Xavier rightly felt it best to install partial memory blocks in Jean-Paul’s mind so that he could deal with the aftermath of the event at a rate that his still-healing mind could bear.

Jean-Paul’s traumatic experiences at the hands of Shrine and the Taygetos personnel forced open the long-dormant mental bond with his sister, Jeanne-Marie. Feeling her twin’s distress, she managed to track him down and the estranged siblings were, once again, reunited. Jean-Paul and his sister resided at the school, each trying to acclimate to life there while he attempted to come to terms with what had transpired in Romania and resumed his teaching duties.

They soon discovered that, due to some as yet unknown factor, most likely to do with Jean-Paul’s torture and the subsequent repairs to his mind, the twins’ powers ceased negating each other. When they touched skin to skin, they could once again create a pure, white light – a part of their combined powers which had been lost after Jeanne-Marie asked Langkowski to alter her powers in 2004.

Muir Island

After Shiro’s psychotic break in Japan and Jean-Paul’s participation in his rescue, Xavier suggested that it would be wise for them both to travel to Muir Island for more intensive therapy. Jeanne-Marie accompanied them so that the twins could work with Moira MacTaggart to better understand their powers. The three relocated in September of 2009, bidding temporary farewell to the school and their friends there.

As part of his therapy, Jean-Paul agreed to begin systematically working through the events that led up to his kidnapping and torture. An unforeseen consequence of this therapy wound up being that some of the blocks Xavier put in place in his mind loosened, shifted, and settled somewhere else in his mind. About a month into their stay on Muir this caused him to lose the ability to create the light that he and Jeanne-Marie had just recently begun to explore with Dr. MacTaggart’s help. It was a loss which upset Jean-Paul intensely. He also began having nightmares about his torture, something which kept him from sleeping well.

It was during another therapy session while attempting to regain the ability to create light with Jeanne-Marie that a series of implanted memories surfaced and triggered a visceral reaction from Jean-Paul. That reaction took the form of a full-body concussive blast. The unfocused energy didn’t harm anyone, but it severely unnerved Jean-Paul and he called an immediate halt to all the therapy he’d been taking part in, effectively cutting himself off from Jeanne-Marie. Unable to cope with the distance he’d put between himself and his sister, Jean-Paul decided to leave Muir Island.

In short, he fled.

Leaving Muir Island

After flying across the Atlantic, a feat which left him exhausted and in dire need of rest, Jean-Paul collapsed in a motel in Virginia before picking up where he’d left off somewhere in his late twenties. He began yet another downward spiral of self-destruction. He drank to dull the memories he didn’t want to have, fucked to make himself forget that he was alone, and avoided people he used to know. Ashamed and wanting nothing more than to return to the way things once were before he was tortured and lost himself, Jean-Paul found himself moving from one city to another.

Whilst in Boston, MA in December of 2009 Jean-Paul met a man named Stewart Bernard with whom he began a brief round of fucking. Brief because the morning after Bernard tried to rob Jean-Paul, manually restraining him and implying that he would rape him before leaving. The restraint, more than the implied physical violation, triggered another concussive blast that sent Bernard staggering backward. Once again unnerved – and now frightened of the fact that he had no control over this power and no way to understand it by himself, Jean-Paul made the grudging decision to seek help from Xavier.

Reluctant to expose himself as being vulnerable, though, Jean-Paul kept his enquiries quiet and waited to hear from Xavier as to whether or not he would once again be welcome at the mansion. One thing he specifically requested when contacting the older mutant was that he not be put on teaching duty, as he felt his powers were now too unpredictable to let him safely instruct students in any field. Mostly, though, he’s just not sure what might trigger another blast and would like to keep possible injuries to a minimum.

Physical Characteristics

Height: 5' 11"

Weight: 180 lbs

Eyes: Blue

Hair: Black

Other Features: Jean-Paul has subtly pointed ears. He has quite a few scars, several of which he acquired during his stewardship of his sister: a short, jagged one which nearly obliterated the Gemini tattoo over his heart and two razor-thin white lines – one across the right side of his throat, the other low on his stomach. There was a tattoo on his left bicep, the kanji for 'hashiru no sensei', but Jean-Paul has recently had it covered by a partial sleeve, the Tower tarot card, as drawn by Louis Royo.

Powers

Jean-Paul is a flight-capable speedster. It is a power which manifested in his mid-teens. However, it wasn’t until he was nearly nineteen that the full extent of his superspeed and the accompanying flight kicked in. He is exceptionally agile, able to reach incredible speeds on land (500 MPH, which he can maintain for approximately four hours before needing to rest) and in the air (roughly Mach 2, which he can maintain for around two hours before needing to rest), however pushing these limits puts a great strain on his system. Ignoring the limits of his abilities will result in Jean-Paul arriving at his destination sweat-lathered, body starving for oxygen, heart rate through the roof, and all his reserves drained. In the event that such a journey was necessary he would need to rest and recuperate for a day or so, usually whilst sleeping, to fully recover. It takes longer for him to recover from excessive exertion now than it did when he was twenty-two.

His mutation increases his metabolism, causing it to work faster than the human norm. This condition is exacerbated by his athletic activities. Jean-Paul, therefore, burns through a great deal of fuel very quickly and has to keep a close eye on what he eats to ensure he’s getting both enough calories and the proper nutrition. A side-effect of his rapid metabolism is that Jean-Paul has a minor healing factor and recovers from injuries significantly faster than a normal human. An example of this would be that, if he broke his arm, it would take around two weeks for him to have full functionality of the limb, as opposed to the typical four weeks or more for a non-mutant.

Jean-Paul’s mutation also provides him with something akin to overall durability whilst traveling at high speeds, allowing him to withstand the ravages of wind, friction, and air turbulence. Though this aspect of his mutation provides him with a certain amount of protection from damage caused by high-velocity collisions (he won’t break his own neck if he runs into a wall at full tilt), Jean-Paul can knock himself out if he slams into objects at high speeds. This increased durability also gives him a certain amount of protection from blunt-force trauma when he’s moving at superhuman speeds. However knives, claws, and bladed weapons can easily slice through his defences.

His power has no bearing on his strength when he’s not moving at superspeeds. He is, in fact, only as strong as a normal human man of his height and build, though he’s at peak physical condition for a man his age. That said, his powers increase the speed of all of Jean-Paul’s movements, which means he’s not only capable of flight, but can also move individual parts of his body at great speed independently of one another, which means he’s capable of delivering jackhammer-speed blows to opponents. This also allows him to avoid or outmaneuver most opponents.

He possesses the same vulnerability to the elements and injury as most humans, save a resistance to extremes of cold. This resistance comes from the kinetic energy he uses to propel himself, the molecular friction within Jean-Paul’s body, which causes him to run a bit warmer than most people. He is, however, just as vulnerable to mental attacks as any normal human.

Due to Langkowski's experiment, from 1990 - 2009 contact with his twin sister, Jeanne-Marie, would nullify Jean-Paul's powers; this could last for up to a full day, but typically wore off after an hour or so. In August of 2009, following the renewal of their mental link, Northstar and Aurora's powers appeared to have begun functioning as they had originally, with physical contact between the twins resulting in an intense flare of white light. However, time at Muir Island has demonstrated that the flare of light between them is unstable, even when they are touching, and Jean-Paul left the island before more than cursory research into the problem could be done.

Jean-Paul can send out concussive blasts from his body, but this is a new development that he doesn’t understand and which he can’t, at the moment, consciously trigger. The only times he’s managed it have been when he felt threatened and as though he’d been backed into a corner – on Muir Island and then in a seedy motel in Boston, MA. Meaning, ultimately, that his concussive blasts are purely defensive and that he cannot control them.

Due to his focus on physical fitness, Northstar's endurance and strength are at peak human levels for his size and build.

Equipment

Despite his distaste for the years spent in Alpha Flight, Northstar has kept his costume from his days in the program, as it is the only clothing he owns that will not be destroyed while moving at extreme velocities.

Trivia

Jean-Paul hates being called JP and prefers to go by "Paul" if there must be a diminutive. Somehow, Lil gets away with calling him "Speedy".

He is gay, very much out, and casual about his sexuality.

He remains something of a fitness freak and wakes up at five almost every morning for two hours of exercise before starting his day.

Jean-Paul owns a bistro in Montreal's Le Village gai, though he has little to do with the day-to-day operation of the place.

Plots

2004

Blaze of Glory

Trojan Horse

2009

Mechanisms of Revenge

Walking Ghosts

Shiva

So You Want To Be A Superhero

Neverland

Red X Mission: Dangerous Load

Mnemovore

Fiddler's Green

Metastasis

Rush

Atomic Angel

Meta

Player: Cai

E-mail: 160px

AIM: writteninsable

Player Icon Base: Logan Marshall-Green

Meta Trivia

Formerly played by Ande with the journal x_vega. Apped by Suzene, who left the game in September 2009 and who took the journal x_cynosure with her.

x_quebecois was created by the mods to avoid the loss of any more Northstar journals.

Picked up by Cai in January 2010.

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