Jean-Paul Beaubier

### Relatives

Melisande Beaubier (mother, deceased)Jean-Baptiste Beaubier (father, deceased)Jeanne-Marie Beaubier (unknown sister, MIA)Luis Martin (foster father, deceased)Anne Martin (foster mother, deceased)Raymonde Belmonde (adoptive father, deceased)

## Personality

Sharp, wary, protective. Jean-Paul is a closed-off, suspicious young man whose default assumption is that everyone is out for their own gain; though kindness sparks a powerful yearning in him, he simply cannot let himself trust it. As a result, he tends to get on better with straight-forward personalities than those offering a soft touch. Underneath all of that protective scar tissue, however, is a fiercely loyal soul who is nearly impossible to budge once he has decided a course of action is right. Despite his best efforts to keep it hidden, there is a well of empathy beneath the speedster's prickly mien, particularly where young kids are concerned. Though he learned very young that the only person he could really ever trust to give a damn about him was himself, it's not a lesson he particularly enjoys seeing those around him learn, especially those who should not have to be so self-reliant just yet. Though he's not terribly good at platitudes and unthinking reassurance, he has a tendency to try and protect those who need it, as he never was protected; he works hard to cover this tendency with a sneer and sharp word, to avoid looking as if he actually cares.

## Powers

Jean-Paul is a mutant possessed of the ability to fly and move at superhuman speeds. Through an act of concentration, Jean-Paul can channel a portion of the kinetic energy of the atomic motion in his body's molecules in a single direction. This can accelerate his body to a velocity in direct proportion to the amount of kinetic energy he has tapped. To hover in midair, Jean-Paul applies thrust downward in a carefully controlled manner.

It is theoretically possible for him to reach 99% of the speed of light (186,272 miles per second in a vacuum), but practical reasons such as his inability to breathe at such speeds and the damage his body would suffer from wind and friction, prevent him from reaching anywhere near this speed. Even a fraction of such velocity of a solid object through Earth's atmosphere would wreak havoc on the atmosphere and on the land or sea below.

As a side effect of partially robbing his molecules of their atomic motion, the binding forces within and between the molecules increase. This enhances the sheer toughness of Jean-Paul's entire body. This effect gives his skin enough durability to withstand the ravages of wind, friction, and air turbulence of speeds up to at least Mach 10 without injury; it is theorized that Jean-Paul's resistance to cold is a side-effect stemming from this aspect of his mutation. When carrying other, unprotected people aloft, Jean-Paul does not move at a rate greater than 70 miles per hour in order that his passenger(s) are able to breathe easily and will not suffer harm from wind, friction, or air turbulence.

Jean-Paul can also move a portion of his body at superhuman speed at a time. Hence, he can overpower an opponent by hitting him repeatedly at superhuman speed with his fists. As a side-effect of his rapid metabolism, Jean-Paul also has a minor healing factor and recovers from injuries significantly faster than the human norm. For example, where it would take a normal human a month or more to heal a broken arm, Jean-Paul might have full use of the limb within two weeks. Soft tissue damage, such as cuts or bruises, vary in healing times according to severity. Severe damage, such as deep stab wounds, will not be enough affected by the healing factor to eliminate the need for immediate medical attention. Jean-Paul has the ability to generate a blinding surge of light by clasping hands with his twin sister, Jeanne-Marie. This light can reach an intensity of up to three million candela.

Though his powers provide 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), Jean-Paul can knock himself out if he slams into objects at high speeds. Though this aspect of his mutation also gives him a certain amount of protection from blunt-force trauma, knives, claws, and other 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 cold -- he can remain comfortable without cold weather gear in temperatures as low as 10 degrees Fahrenheit. This resistance does little to aid him against concentrated cold attacks -- he would not be able to simply shrug off an attack from Iceman, for example, though his resistance might help ward off some of the more unpleasant side-effects that would come later (frostbite, hypothermia, etc.).

Jean-Paul also has a subtle mental link with his long-lost sister, though neither twin is consciously aware of this and the bond only impacts the emotional state of either twin when one or the other is in severe pain or distress.

Jean-Paul is as susceptible as any normal human to mental attacks most of the time, though his thoughts can become difficult to read when he's moving at speed; while this can make him harder for a psi to pin down, this also means he can't be reached by friendly telepathic contact either. His mutation also increases his metabolism to something faster than the human norm. 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. His faster metabolism also means that drugs and poisons hit him quicker and harder than they would a normal human. Finally, his link with his sister means that he exhibits an unpredictable degree of emotional instability when she is in distress.

## History

The joy that Melisande and Jean-Baptiste Beaubier felt at the birth of their beautiful twin children, Jean-Paul and Jeanne-Marie, was extinguished tragically when the young couple's car was run off of the road by unknown parties, and crashed off of an embankment. Though fatally injured, Jean-Baptiste managed to crawl away from the twisted, burning wreck of the vehicle with his children in his arms before he perished.

Jean-Baptiste had no living relations, so the children were sent to live with one of their mother's cousins, Luis Martin and his wife, Mariette. The Martins could not afford to care for two children, and so Jeanne-Marie was given up for adoption to another family. Shortly after this, Luis Martin was required to relocate to Quebec due to job concerns. The families lost touch with each other, and Jean-Paul grew up never knowing that he had a twin sister.

Though Jean-Paul was not abused, the Martin household was a cool and distant one. Luis did not believe in coddling children, and Anne (who would have preferred a little girl to raise in the first place) resented the duty of rearing a boy not even of her blood, particularly since Jean-Paul's presence meant that she and her husband could not afford to have children of their own. Jean-Paul, as a result, tended to form stronger bonds with his non-familial caregivers than with his adopted parents.

When Jean-Paul was six, the Martins were involved in an automobile accident and Jean-Paul was the only survivor. After he was released from the hospital, the young boy was given over to the state. Though he was adopted relatively swiftly, Jean-Paul was traumatized by the event and not at all a demonstrative or loving child; he was strong-willed, acted out constantly, and prone to scrapping at school. He was quickly given up from his first family, and passed on to others who were no more willing to deal with the troublesome child than they had been. Jean-Paul's behavior grew worse, progressing from noisy, negative-attention seeking behavior to cold distance to outright disrespect and rebellion against his foster parents and, at thirteen years old, he finally ran away from home after an argument with his foster-father turned physical. He spent almost two months after that scratching out a living in the streets of Montreal. His days were spent picking pockets and stealing from vendors to live, his night sleeping in the doorways of shops or in alleys or abandoned buildings, always looking over his shoulder and desperately lonely, though the boy would not have admitted to it under any circumstances.

This bleak lifestyle came to an end when the boy tried to steal from a book vendor patronized by one Raymond Belmonde. The gentleman stopped the theft, taking a rather hard punch to the jaw from the thwarted boy when he grabbed Jean-Paul's wrist. The promise of hot food, however, took a lot of the fight out of the skinny, half-starved youth. Over the course of the meal, Belmonde coaxed Jean-Paul's story out of him and decided that the boy was not going back into the care of people that had failed him so utterly, and took on the task of civilizing the young urchin. Though Jean-Paul had little formal schooling from that point on, Raymond hired a tutor for him; once the boy's mind was stimulated, it turned out that Jean-Paul had a voracious intellectual appetite that went to work on every book in Raymond's possession.

Even this respite was destined to be short-lived. As anti-mutant sentiment rose and random scans and blood tests became more common, Jean-Paul's status soon came to light. Raymonde tried to secret his young charge away as round-ups taking mutants to concentration camps became common occurrences, but Jean-Paul was already a known mutant and his home was a target. Jean-Paul ran, and when Raymonde tried to cover his retreat, he was shot. Enraged, Jean-Paul attacked the soldiers and was apprehended by their Sentinels.

He was transported to a holding facility, then to a Sentinel camp on the western coast of the US. The camp was very much a lawless, dog-eat-dog situation, where supplies were dropped off randomly with little or no mechanism for distribution, but even without the use of his powers, Jean-Paul was fast. He managed to keep himself more or less fed, despite his hyper metabolism. The dynamic changed when he met up with Illyana, a young girl thrown into the camp with no guardian to shelter her from the gangs.

Jean-Paul wasn't looking to form an attachment, but he couldn't just turn away, and the girl's own prickly attitude appealed to him despite himself. He wasn't so much older than her, but they partnered up, helping each survive day to day as best they could, a gang of two against the world.