Monica Rambeau

## Personality

Monica is confident, intelligent and has a strong sense of duty to the wider community that comes from a well-grounded family life where public service (Her father is a retired firefighter and her mom is active in the local Baptist church) was a paramount virtue. This makes her something of a natural leader.

Monica also has a dry, cutting, and often sarcastic sense of humour that she often has trouble reigning in. When used properly, it's a powerful weapon, but at 16 she hasn't quite learned when is the right time so it sometimes undermines her.

She'll make friends quickly, but won't grant people loyalty at all costs. Friends who ask her to make compromises on things she considers important will be sidelined fairly quickly.

## Powers

Monica can transform herself into any form of energy within the electromagnetic spectrum. Among the many energy forms she has assumed are cosmic rays, gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet radiation, visible light, electricity, infrared radiation, microwaves, radio waves and neutrinos. She is invisible and intangible in many of her energy forms (the most frequent exception being visible light), and is capable of flight in all her energy forms (reaching velocities up to and including light speed). She also has the ability to project these energies from her body while she is in human form, usually in the form of energy blasts from her hands; a variation of this ability enables her to project light-based holographic illusions. When she encounters a new or unfamiliar energy, Monica can often duplicate it given enough time for analysis, such as when she replicated and drained the verdant will-powered energies of an extra-dimensional emerald gladiator. Monica tends to be physically insubstantial in her energy forms, though with concentration and effort she can sometimes perform tasks such as briefly grasping an object, either by partially solidifying or by applying some sort of force to the object in question.

## Talents

Monica was working towards the goal of eventually joining the New Orleans Harbour patrol and so is an exceptionally strong swimmer, a certified first aider, and a practiced marksman. She's also gifted in terms of organization and leadership.

## Interests

Monica tends to be goal-focused and sheds interests that will be of limited use in achieving that goal. Since deciding she wanted to join the Harbour Patrol, she took on hobbies, like swimming and shooting, that would help her with that. When her powers manifested, although she wasn't entirely pleased with the whole turn of events, she started researching physics and related subjects.

## History

Monica grew up in a solid middle-class family in New Orleans. She enjoyed all the attention of her parents as an only child, but also felt the weight of all of their expectations. The main expectation was, with two parents heavily involved in serving the wider community, that Monica would choose a life and career that also involved service and working for the good of those around her.

Her powers emerged when she was 16. She was involved in a job shadowing program with the NO Harbour Patrol when they unexpectedly uncovered a criminal operation that involved a dangerous weapon that radiated extra-dimensional energy. Despite the fact that she was not directly involved in the action and was at what was considered a safe distance from it all, the small amount of energy she was exposed to triggered her mutant abilities.

The people she was with didn't realize what had happened. When she got home and told her parents, her parents set out to research what the best course of action would be and eventually learned of Xavier's school. With Monica's dream of serving people in the harbor patrol gone, she was shipped off to the school to learn to handle her new powers.

Monica isn't exactly pleased with this. The good that superheroes do is, in her mind, vague and hard to calculate, while jobs that involve first responders have a direct and impactful effect on people. Until she figures out how to manage her powers and see how they can directly help the people around her, she's going to be a little grumpy about the whole deal.