Jean Grey

## Personality

Jean is a quiet girl, not exactly shy or awkward, but occasionally withdrawn. She is naturally friendly and curious about other people, so it doesn’t take much coaxing to bring her out of her shell. She empathizes easily with others and has a strong sense of right and wrong. Once her ire is roused, she’s a very difficult lady to dissuade.

## Powers

Jean is a telepath and telekinetic. She is potentially very powerful. Jean rarely uses her telepathy as an active power due to her traumatic manifestation, but routinely senses the presence of other people. She’s still working on building up shielding that’s of equal strength to her psychic sensitivity, and often picks up strong emotions and surface thoughts without meaning to.

Jean is more proficient with her telekinesis, though she’s still working on fine control. When using her TK on small objects, she’s able to maintain a precision grip and manipulate her targets with reasonable accuracy. However, the more weight she attempts to lift, the more likely she is to lose sense of how much power is needed to properly maintain her telekinetic grip. For example, there’s little chance of Jean dropping or wrecking a glass she’s trying to manipulate with her TK, unless she’s startled or otherwise disrupted, due to her having a sense of how much pressure needs to be maintained from having handled similar objects by hand. But if she attempted to lift something along the lines of a car, she’d probably either be unable to maintain a steady grip or simply crush it because her sense of how much power she would need to exert to maintain a hold on it would be simply, “A LOT!” For the time being, she can lift one average-sized adult with relative safety; after that, things start getting iffy.

## Talents

Jean is an avid soccer player and diehard fan of the USWNT.

## Interests

Jean has an interest in photography. She wants to be a teacher some day, so she also reads quite a bit on child development and psychology.

## History

Jean’s parents provided their family with a stable, upper middle-class lifestyle in upstate New York. Jean had all the advantages a child could wish for growing up, was popular with both her teachers and peers, and seemed to be a normal (if somewhat overachieving) girl.

That was all turned on its head just before Jean’s twelfth birthday. She and her friend, Annie Richardson, were chasing each other around outside of Annie’s home after school. Annie darted into the street to avoid Jean, and was struck by a car. The driver never stopped, and Jean was left cradling her dying friend as horrified neighbors called for help.

Jean’s telepathy manifested at that moment, allowing her to share every moment of Annie’s fading life - her pain, her fear, her hopes, and loves were all laid bare, and yet Jean could do nothing but bare most intimate witness as Annie’s consciousness faded and, finally, winked out forever. The shock of the ordeal nearly killed Jean as well, and she withdrew into a catatonic state as a result.

For years, it seemed that none of the specialists sought out by her desperate parents had any clue of how to help Jean. Then, just after Jean’s 14th birthday, they were approached by a man by the name of Charle’s Xavier. He assessed Jean using his own mental powers, and found the girl largely still trapped in the moment of Annie’s death, unable to move on from the guilt and grief, and so traumatized by the intruding thoughts of others that she’d used her powers to completely wall herself off from world.

Xavier used his own powers to block Jean’s telepathy and, bit by bit, coaxed her out of the quiet, tortured corners of her own mind. Once Jean made her way back to the waking world, both she and Charles were surprised by the emergence of Jean’s teleknisis - or rather, the fact that it emerged as a rebound effect of Jean’s long-term catatonia, shattering every window in the house.

Despite the potential dangers of living with a traumatized mutant, Jean’s family insisted she remain in the familiar environment of their home. As a result, Charles frequently traveled to the Grey residence to tutor Jean in her powers; as Jean regained confidence, these face-to-face sessions decreased, with video calls between them becoming more common. It took another two years before Jean felt ready to risk having her telepathy restored, but at the same time, her confidence had grown to the point that she also felt she should make some attempt at a normal life again, perhaps even go back to school.