Summit

Summit is an American mutant superhero and member of Watchtower.

## Biography

Audrey Herschberger's mutant talent activated at a very young age. She was moving small piles of earth by pure will before she learned to read, and her parents knew that she needed to learn to control her abilities quickly. Thankfully they had settled in Nevada just outside Las Vegas, and the open desert provided plenty of safe space for Audrey to practice. Though anti-mutant stigma forced her to keep a low profile, she was never very secretive about her abilities, and when she turned eighteen a family friend got her a lucrative job working for an oil company to identify underground deposits of crude.

Audrey kept up this work for a few years but found it unfulfilling. She craved more from life, and began to toy with the idea of becoming a superhero like the ones she saw on TV. Fate made the decision for her, however, when an oil field she was helping to establish in Texas was attacked by Geos, a mystic supervillain with power over the earth. Surprised and outmatched, Audrey and her drilling team were trapped underground when Geos collapsed the field underneath them and lit rivers of crude oil aflame in what would likely have been an unprecedented natural disaster. But Audrey, wounded and trapped in the subterranean darkness, called upon all her strength to stabilize a mile-long tunnel in the loose shale. This not only allowed the miners to reach the surface but also drained all the oil away from the spouts that were fueling the growing blaze. Once more reaching sunlight, Audrey smothered the oil fire with moving waves of desert sand before collapsing in exhaustion.

When she woke up, Audrey was hailed as a national hero and she realized she couldn't go back to her old life. She took the name 'Summit' to declare to the world the supremacy of her power, and then began to back up that bold statement by fighting crime as a superhero. She operated in the Southwest for a time before expanding her activities to the rest of the country. Thanks to the scale of her powers she not only foiled supervillains (occasionally facing entire teams by herself) but also responded to natural disasters. She could instantly smother forest fires and divert floods, making her an invaluable asset for the nation. But even so, she wanted to do more for the world at large, particularly because she was tired of the anti-mutant sentiment in America. When Citadel approached her with an offer to join the newly formed Watchtower, she saw an opportunity to put her skills to use on a global scale she'd only ever dreamed of. She immediately accepted and ever since has proven to be an indispensable part of the team.

## Personality

Summit is a tough, no-nonsense woman who is used to excelling in the dangerous and highly competitive world of the solo-super. She doesn't like asking permission or explaining herself, and has had difficulty adjusting to teamwork. But she is also courageous, determined, and dedicated to fighting evil no matter the danger. Whatever she might lack as a team player, her allies have come to admire her strength of will and fortitude, to say nothing of her raw strength.

In her free time Summit prefers active hobbies, and spends a great deal of energy experimenting with new athletic pursuits. She is also an avid traveler and sightseer. She is joined by Firebrand on many of these adventures, and the two women have established a close bond.

## Powers

Summit is a geokinetic with the ability to move stone and dirt with the force of her will alone. She can levitate huge amounts of rock (or dirt, concrete, sand, or any similar material) and use them to shield herself from attacks while simultaneously pummeling her foes. Her powers are great enough to lift over a kiloton of stone any one time, and she can hurl that stone long distances with speed and accuracy. She can strike with precision if she wishes, but she can also utilize massive area-of-effect attacks to drop stone over hundreds of square yards simultaneously.

Thanks to long years of practice honing her talents, Summit can also manipulate the trace minerals found in living bodies. She can crush the bones of a person with a thought, and she often deals with minor enemies with a quick non-lethal fracture. And by bolstering her own bones with telekinetic force she achieves great damage resistance and can even enhance her lifting strength far beyond that of a normal human.

Summit has an innate connection to any natural surface she comes into contact with. She can sense the movements of anyone walking on the same surface as herself, and she can create ripples in the ground ranging from minor tremors to destructive earthquakes that can be felt for miles. She can even levitate a platform of stone underneath herself, propelling it with her kinetic abilities to achieve a crude group flight.

A unique facet of Summit's power is the ability to repair stone that has been shattered. She claims that stone has a 'memory,' and although this idea is scientifically dubious she is indeed able to restore almost any damaged natural material to its former state, even repairing the most delicate crystalline minerals. She can use this ability to alter stones she's wielding in battle, fracturing them into gravel or reverting them back into boulders at a whim, and she can also reverse incidental damage to concrete structures that frequently occurs during a metahuman battle.

## Weaknesses

Summit's powers rely on the presence of minerals in the environment. Although she can work some tricks with the trace amounts of dust in the air around her, if she is deprived of natural materials her powers become nearly useless. Her powers have no effect on metal unless it is in the form of the most raw, unworked ore.

Summit is technically wanted in her home country and PRIMUS watches her closely. She is wanted for questioning in connection with a series of small but highly destructive tremors that ripped through her home city of Las Vegas in the 90's. Although she claims innocence, she has never had the matter cleared up and must be careful not to run afoul of PRIMUS' agents or face arrest.