Jean Grey

Subject Facts

Full Name: Jean Grey
Codename: N/A
Age: 33
Gender: Female
Archetype: Super Hero
Aliases: Red, Ms Grey
Marital Status: Single
Affiliation: X-Men (Red)

Subject Attributes

Superhuman Abilities: Omega-Level Mutant - Jean is placed soundly in the uppermost tier for mutant abilities. This means that she has "unlimited potential" in the realms of her powers. Some have said that that means "if [Jean] can think it, [she] can make it happen," though that's not necessarily true.

Telekinesis - Jean can manipulate matter through sheer force of will. This enables her to levitate objects, including herself and others to assimilate self-sustained flight. She can loose blasts of telekinetic force, or erect barriers or fields of that same force for defensive purposes. Jean's been shown to manage feats so precise as force blood to clot to stop a femoral artery from bleeding and agitate air molecules to the point of spontaneous combustion.

Telepathy - Jean Grey is considered one of the most powerful telepaths on the planet. Jean can accomplish any feat standard of telepaths, including reading and projecting thoughts, loosing of mental bolts to stun or incapacitate and the competent traversal of the astral plane, etc.

Standard Abilities: Experience - Jean has been rigorously trained in the application of her mutant abilities for the prevention and correction of disasters, and in combat scenarios from a young age. Not only, but she's used this training in the field for years. Jean is well-versed in negotiating dangerous climates, politically or physically, and employing her telepathy and telekinesis to the most tactical ends.

Education - Jean Grey has a degree from Metro College. She's taught at Xavier's Institute in the past, and is knowledgeable in administrative fields, having run the Institute as acting Headmistress previously, also.

Pilot and X-Tech - She's been taught in the piloting of vehicles and technology - including Cerebra/Cerebro -used by the X-Men. In congress with this, Jean retains the memories of Maddie Pryor, who was an accomplished and talented pilot, which means that Jean can now pilot crafts masterfully.

Hand-to-hand Combat - Jean has been taught and trained to a moderate level in the art of hand-to-hand combat by teammates in the X-Men more talented in the art than her - Logan, for example. She can and has successfully protected herself with the strength in her limbs when her powers aren't a viable option.

Paraphernalia: Searebro - Based on Cerebro and Cerebra, this model is distinct in that it uses the waters of the ocean (itself being at the bottom of the Atlantic) to amplify Jean's telepathic abilities.

X-Men: Red - Jean's team of X-Men operate out of an airtight facility on the fringes of Atlantis, at Namor's allowance. They have advanced technology, like other X-Teams, and use a re-purposed Sentinel as a mode of transportation.

Subject Weaknesses: Phoenix Host - Jean's status as the most obvious host for the Phoenix Force paints a galaxy-spanning target on her back. Not only could she earn the ire and vengeful advances of those that the Force has wronged, but Jean could be targeted by cultures on the opposite side of the spectrum; who worship the Phoenix Force as their patron deity.

Over-passionate - Arguably "stubbornness", when Jean puts her mind to something she will not abate. Particularly if the cause is righteous in her eyes. She will go against protocol, convention and even the law to safeguard or further it.

Mortal - Despite her powers and connection to the Phoenix Force, Jean is a mortal woman capable of injury, death and the contraction of disease as well as the simple fact of aging.

Subject History

Jean Grey is the younger daughter of Professor John Grey of the History Department of Bard College in Annandale-on Hudson, New York, and his wife Elaine. When Jean was ten years old, she was playing with her best friend Annie Richardson when Annie was hit by an automobile. The emotion that Jean felt as she held her dying friend awakened her own latent telepathic powers, and she thus experienced Annie's own emotions as she died. This traumatic occurrence left Jean in a withdrawn and deeply depressed state. Moreover, Jean discovered that she could not control her newly awakened telepathic abilities, and had to isolate herself from other people to keep hold of her sanity.

Finally, when Jean was eleven, a psychiatrist recommended to her parents that they consult a colleague of his, Professor Charles Xavier, who was secretly a mutant with telepathic abilities . Xavier explained to Jean, but not to her parents, that she was a mutant, and he treated her for several years. During this time he erected psychic shields in Jean's mind so that she would not be able to use her telepathic abilities until she had achieved the maturity necessary for dealing with them. Simultaneously, he taught her how to levitate and manipulate objects through psionic force. When Xavier judged that Jean had reached a certain level of mastery of her telekinetic power, he recommended to her parents that they enroll her in his newly established School for Gifted Youngsters. Unknown to Professor and Mrs. Grey, this school served as a cover for the X-Men, a team of young superhuman mutants being trained by Xavier to combat the threats posed by other mutants who used their powers against humanity. On entering the school, Jean Grey became the fifth member to join the X-Men and took the code name of Marvel Girl.

The original five X-Men remained together for several years. Shortly after she joined the team, Jean and Scott Summers, the X-Man known as Cyclops, fell in love with each other. Although neither told the other his or her true feelings for him or her for quite some time, they finally openly admitted their love for each other. When Xavier realized that he had to remain in isolation for an extended period of time in order to make preparations to thwart an attempted invasion of Earth by the alien Z'nox, he released the psychic barriers preventing Jean from using her telepathic abilities. Jean's added maturity and her years of practice in using her telepathic powers enabled her to use her telepathic abilities from that point onward. Hence, with Xavier otherwise occupied, she could use her own telepathic powers to aid the X-Men. Sometime later, after Xavier had recruited several new members for the X-Men, Jean and some of the other X-Men decided to leave the group in order to lead their own lives. Scott Summers, however, remained in the X-Men and he and Jean continued their romantic relationship. Shortly after she left the team, Jean and the then current members of the X-Men were kidnapped by Steven Lang's Sentinels and taken aboard Lang's space station. After defeating Lang the X-Men had to escape back to Earth aboard a space shuttle during a solar radiation storm. The craft's pilot had to sit in an area without enough shielding to protect him or her from the lethal radiation. Jean volunteered to be pilot, but while guiding the shuttle to Earth, the solar radiation finally proved to be too great for her to hold back any longer with her powers. She began to succumb to the radiation's lethal effects.

It was long believed that Jean had indeed died aboard the space shuttle but became linked with a primal energy force known as the "Phoenix Force" which recreated and reentered her body. The vastly more powerful being took the code name Phoenix. Phoenix joined the X-Men, but Jean had not had the proper training for coping with such immense power. At first Jean's strong moral sense kept the Phoenix Force under control, and usually subconsciously prevented her from using her powers beyond a certain limit. But then Phoenix fell victim to psychic manipulation by Mastermind, who was attempting to prove his worthiness to become a member of the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club by mesmerizing Phoenix into becoming its new Black Queen. He psychically induced dark, repressed desires from within Jean's consciousness to come to the surface of Phoenix's mind, submerging Jean's true normal personality. Phoenix finally freed herself of Mastermind's control, but was unable to prevent the dark side of Jean's personality with the full power of the Phoenix Force behind it, from overwhelming her, not having had the training necessary to repress it. Jean's true personality was supplanted more fully than before, and Phoenix became the malevolent Dark Phoenix. After Dark Phoenix wreaked incredible devastation, Jean's true personality reasserted control of Phoenix once more, and, before Cyclops' horrified eyes, Phoenix committed suicide rather than revert to Dark Phoenix. Scott mourned Jean, and eventually married Madelyne Pryor, who greatly resembled her.

It was later revealed that Jean did not die, nor had she ever become Phoenix. The Phoenix Force responded to Jean's anguish and telepathic calls for help as she was dying aboard the space shuttle, and appeared before her, shaping its form and consciousness after Jean's own. The entity told Jean that she was dying, but that by taking the Phoenix Force's hands, Jean would gain her "heart's desire." What Jean most wanted was to save the lives of the X-Men and herself. She held onto the Phoenix Force's arm and fell into a coma-like state. Simultaneously, the Phoenix Force fully took on both the form and the memories and personality of Jean Grey. The Force used its powers to ensure the survival of the X-Men in their return to Earth and crash landing in Jamaica Bay off New York City. It was also responsible for casting Jean into a state of suspended animation and placing her within a psionic cocoon, which rested for years at the bottom of Jamaica Bay while Jean's injuries healed completely. Thus the Phoenix Force fulfilled its pledge to her. The Force compelled itself to believe it was Jean Grey, whose personality it had assumed. Indeed, it had imitated Jean's consciousness so perfectly that not even Xavier realized the impostor. It has been theorized that it was the entity's own power rebelling against the duplicate of Jean's personality it had given itself that caused it to become Dark Phoenix. When Phoenix committed suicide, it was acting exactly as Jean herself would have done under the circumstances, since it had endowed itself with an exact copy of her personality.

Many months after Phoenix's death, the Avengers found Jean's pod beneath Jamaica Bay and brought it to the Fantastic Four for study. Jean released herself from the pod, at first unable to remember her encounter with the Phoenix Force. With the help of the Avengers and Fantastic Four, she recalled what had happened and learned what happened to Phoenix. As a result of her harrowing experiences, Jean had somehow lost her telepathic powers, but the strength of her telekinetic powers had greatly increased. Jean was reunited with her fellow founding X-Men members, the Angel, Beast, Cyclops, and Iceman. She was greatly disturbed to learn of the current wave of anti-mutant sentiment in the country, Xavier's recent disappearance, and the fact that the then current X-Men were now working alongside Magneto, the original X-Men's greatest foe. Because the others agreed with Jean that they should do something about the current situation of mutants, the five friends founded a new organization to help other superhuman mutants, X-Factor. Later, after Professor Xavier returned from a long sojourn in space with the Starjammers, Jean and the other members of X-Factor rejoined the X-Men. While Jean had been in suspended animation Scott had married Madelyne Pryor, a clone of Jean created by Mr. Sinister. Eventually Pryor went mad, developed vast powers, and became known as the Goblin Queen. The Goblin Queen died in combat with Jean.

Some years later, Scott finally married the real Jean Grey. During their honeymoon, however, their spirits were transported two millennia into an alternate future and were placed in new bodies by the Askani cult. Their leader, Rachel Summers, the daughter of the Scott and Jean of an alternate reality, had also served in the X-Men under the name Phoenix. As Slym and Redd, Scott and Jean spent years in that future time, raising Nathan, the son of Scott Summers and Madelyne Pryor, who had earlier been brought to the future. Eventually, Scott and Jean returned to their own time and bodies, leaving Nathan in the future to become the heroic warrior Cable. In Rachel's honor Jean adopted the name Phoenix when she returned to the X-Men.

At the dawn of the new millennium, the mutant warlord Apocalypse captured the Twelve: powerful mutants who would determine the fate of their kind, including Scott and Jean. They were wired to a machine that would channel their awesome energies into Apocalypse, allowing him to absorb the body of X-Man, a time-tossed teenager possessed of vast telepathic and telekinetic power, and ascend to a state of cosmic awareness. As his teammates fell around him, a powerless Scott shoved X-Man out of Apocalypse's draining circuit, merging with the would-be conqueror to create a new evil entity. Jean detected Scott's psyche inside Apocalypse and prevented the X-Men from destroying him. However, he was presumed dead by most of his teammates. Only Jean and the future-era freedom fighter called Cable refused to believe Scott had perished. Investigating rumors that he was alive, Jean and Cable found Cyclops struggling to reassert his mind over Apocalypse's psyche. With Jean's help, Cable exorcised the warlord and shattered his essence. Thanks to the support of his wife and adopted family, Scott was able to shake off the devastating effects of his merger with Apocalypse and rejoin the X-Men.

Not long thereafter, Jean became part of the "New X-Men" alongside Logan, Scott, Hank and eventually Emma Frost. With a fresh wave of racism and criminal acts against mutant kind, Professor Xavier was possessed by a fresh fervor to make his dream of coexistence a reality. Jean struggled with the apathy and distance that Scott was placing between them, greatly because of his merger with Apocalypse still haunting him, as well as a return of her telekinesis, albeit at a greatly decreased level. The first encounter of note of the new, greatly shrunken roster had was with Charles' malevolent twin, Cassandra Nova, who orchestrated the utter destruction of Genosha. After defeating Cassandra, Charles announced that he was a mutant to the world, and the true nature of Xavier's Institute, but immediately left for a long vacation in the Shi'Ar, placing Jean as acting headmistress in his absence.

When the U-Men attempted to attack the Institute and turn it into a mutant organ farm to supply humans with medically-engineered superpowers, Jean began reclaiming her lost mastery of her telekinesis, and then some. It was then revealed by Beast that Charles wasn't Charles at all, and that Cassandra Nova had switched their minds/bodies at the end of their fight with her. So not only was Cassandra the one behind Charles' decision to out Xavier's Institute and his own status as a mutant, but Charles was stuck in a psionic prison of Cassandra's design within her body, that the X-Men had been detaining. With Emma's help, Jean freed Charles from his prison but he was still in risk of dying. Ultimately Emma tricked Cassandra to return to her body, which was actually the Shi'ar guardian Stuff impersonating her.

Following an attack on the X-Men by a mutant impersonating Magneto named Xorn (who had previously been a teacher at the institute), Jean and Wolverine were trapped on a space station that was hurtling into the sun. Seeing no hope for survival and wanting to spare his teammate further suffering, Wolverine seemingly killed Jean, unleashing the Phoenix Consciousness within her and resurrecting her. Returning to Earth, Jean, with the power of the Phoenix, opposed the faux Magneto and was killed by a massive stroke induced by a lethal electromagnetic pulse. After being killed by the faux Magneto, Jean hatched from a Phoenix Egg in the future. Sublime sought to use Jean’s Phoenix power to control all of creation. However, Jean remembered her mission and destroyed the future reality. Jean ascended to the White Hot Room as a White Phoenix of the Crown and created a new future by pushing Scott to stay with Emma Frost and continue the Xavier Institute. Later, a band of Shi'ar used their advanced technology to force the Phoenix Force out of the White Hot Room and shattered it with an 'Event Horizon'. Confused and driven insane, the Phoenix flew to Earth and forcefully resurrected Jean Grey. Jean ultimately merged with the Phoenix Force, once again becoming the White Phoenix, and returned to the White Hot Room to find its missing pieces.

Next, Jean found herself living in Annandale-On-Hudson, working as a waitress for her friend, Annie, in a diner. When the X-Men appeared in her town, they helped her to realize that it was truly a bubble reality created by the Phoenix to incubate her, keeping her ready to be its host again when it needed her. Snapped out of the spell the Phoenix had wrought on her, Jean confronted the Force directly. The Phoenix had, Jean realized, fallen in love with the being they were together; but that isn't what Jean wanted and so, she renounced the Force and they parted amicably.

Afterward, Jean embarked on a quest to reorient with the world she now found herself in. She righted past wrongs, built bridges where there were none, and began her own X-Men team. First working out of Wakanda with T'Challa's aid, then from X-Lantis (a facility on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean) with Namor's assistance, Jean's group combated Cassandra Nova and her attempt to eradicate mutants worldwide through the use of nanite Sentinels. Jean and her team had barely beat this threat when Nate Grey/X-Man began trying to alter the reality of the world to his liking. After a climactic battle where Jean tried (and failed) to get through to Nate, he used his powers to apparently wipe himself from existence.

Subject Interview

(Sample from a point post-Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey and pre-X-Men: Red.)

"I'm curious, Jean: how are you adjusting?"

The question reverberated in her mind even hours after the therapy session from that morning. With her most recent... let's call it "return," Jean had come to fully realize and acknowledge the toxic relationship she had had with the Phoenix. Once upon a time, she'd reveled in the entity that they made together, one with the power to unmake, change, or rewrite the fabric of creation at a whim. Before that, it had terrified her; an inhuman being roosting in her soul with the power and experience to lay waste to whole galaxies.

Only this last time, when Jean was made aware of the fact that the Phoenix was incubating her in a false reality until such a time as it chose to make her its host again had Jean properly accept how unhealthy their bond was. She may have had a sincere heart-to-heart with it, and had separated from it completely afterward, but the comprehension had stuck. Had lead to her seeking out a psychologist for weekly sessions to order the disparate strands of her paradoxical life.

"Strange as it sounds, this isn't my first time trying to reenter the world of the living after a... sabbatical."

That's what Jean had answered, and it was the truth. Granted, this time was different. She'd been gone so long and so much had changed nearly beyond recognition in that time apart. The X-Men had been divided down the center; there was a new institute named after her; Scott was... She had trouble even thinking about all of it.

"Plus, I have some study buddies."

She could pore over articles, summarized events and documents to her hearts' content, but Jean had learned and absorbed the most through her telepathy since returning. Her friends offered her their thoughts and recollections on matters and events and Jean gratefully waded through their memories, coming out on the other side with more intimate understandings of what had transpired than any text could provide.

"And how about your clearance?"

Jean smiled at the question, but it was a tight and strained sort of grin. She understood, really. She empathized. Knew where everyone was coming from. In the past she'd been the host of a being that could crack the earth in two like an egg without much trouble. That's why (even though several friends and associates pointed out she didn't owe it to them, technically) she'd offered herself for scrutiny by the Avengers and SHIELD. After a gauntlet of tests ranging from advanced technology to the arcane were passed and Jean's Phoenix-free status cemented formally, she'd been let loose. Though, she knew, those two groups and countless others would always have a close eye on her, waiting for a flaming raptor to return.

"Finished. Given. Thank God," she'd said. "I think the last two days of observation were just out of spite, if I'm being honest."

Author's Notes

Player Alias: Di

Other Characters: Wanda Maximoff

How did you find MFT?: Creator/founder