Jeb Guthrie

**Player**: Richard

**Character Name:** Jebediah “Jeb” Guthrie

**Canon of Origin:** Jeb Guthrie

**Personality:** Jeb's a middle child, and it shows. He's used to hand-me-down everything, and he looks up to his older brothers and is fiercely protective of his family. He dealt with the loss of their father in a somewhat unique way. He started acting out, and while Sam became the father figure, Jeb became the comedic relief. He found that making people smile, even if it was ruefully after he pulled a stunt, was rewarding to him. He used the jokes and the pranks as a mask to hide his own grief, and it was a behavior that just kind of... stuck. But more than anything, he started standing up for his family, no matter what.

Jeb takes a lot of pride in where he comes from. He knows Kentucky isn't known for much, but it's his home, and it means a lot to him. Jeb will often exaggerate his accent or drawl around others, if only because he thinks it's amusing and it tends to alter peoples' expectations of him. Jeb isn't the brightest, but he's no fool, either.

**Powers:** Jeb has what a fancier person would call “ocular electrified plasma ejection” capabilities. Jeb would describe it as “I shoot lightnin' from my eyes.”

While Jeb's description is succinct and certainly vivid, it's not entirely accurate. While there is a predominant electrical element to his abilities, the electricity is guided by a special, blue plasma that his eyes eject. This plasma can be found in different ratios to the electricity, and Jeb can mentally control (to a certain degree) how much plasma and how much electricity is present in an optic blast. This allows for more 'solid' beams to be fired with potentially lower voltages if he so desires, or to shoot a more 'loose' blast that barely contains a spray of high voltage electricity.

Jeb draws from a naturally replenishing reservoir of both the plasma and electricity; both of these are byproducts derived from his intake of food and water. It is possible for him to run out of both, though his natural 'reserves' can increase with exercise.

Even at their most solid, Jeb's optic beams cannot even hope to puncture metal, much less break bones. They can knock a person over, potentially, but the electricity usually does that just fine. Jeb's control over amperage seems to be controlled largely by his mental state; he hasn't killed anyone, yet, with his powers, and he doesn't even know if he can (and he doesn't want to). But he's definitely put a hurting on some people with them, before coming to Xavier's.

Due to the nature of his mutation, Jeb's aim is as good as his sight. If he can see it, he can hit it, providing it isn't moving. He can see while firing his optic blasts, but everything looks blue while he's doing so.

Also, Jeb can artificially charge his powers by drawing on electrical sources. A side-effect of his powers is that he suffers no ill effects from absorbing electricity, though the effects it can have on his hair is somewhat comical.

**Talents:** Jeb's good at the harmonica (Sam taught him). He's also good at pranks, if you ask him. He also thinks he's funny. Your mileage my vary.

**Interests**: Girls. Classic rock. Jokes. Looking out for his family.

**History:** Jeb was born to the large and largely obscure Guthrie clan in rural Kentucky. Shortly after his youngest sister was born, their father, Thomas, passed away from black lung from working in the coal mines. Sam found himself taking over the household, and Jeb was picking up the slack with his siblings wherever he could.

But he still found time to scrap with the Cabots.

The Cabots were another family in their neck of the woods who had a keen hatred for the Guthrie family; the Guthrie family was no stranger to mutations. Sam had a mutation of his own, and Josh had grown a pair of wings. Josh was dating a Cabot girl, and the Cabots didn't like that one bit, because the Cabots hated mutants.

To Jeb, they were worse than anyone else on the face of the earth. A few school fights made it clear that the school system wouldn't tolerate the tussling in the halls, so Jeb and the Cabot boys took it elsewhere. Convenience stores, open fields, playgrounds. Anywhere they could get away with it. Jeb came home with busted lips and black eyes and bruises, but he gave as good as he got. Which was something, considering he was usually outnumbered two to one.

The last straw finally came when Jeb's mutation surfaced. One of the Cabot boys had decided to grab himself a baseball bat during an after-school scrap, but before he could use it, Jeb let him have it, hard. The other Cabot brother freaked, and ran off with his brother in tow. Lucinda decided that enough was enough, and sent Jeb to Xavier's to hopefully learn how to be a bit more judicious about the use of his powers. He is scheduled to arrive at the same time as his brother, Jay.